


Sacrificial Magics

by burglebezzlement



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Sandwiches, Thunderstorms, Vampire deaths, Vampires, post-carry on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a routine survey for Professor Bunce, Simon discovers that someone else is visiting holes -- and leaving an alarming amount of blood behind. Meanwhile, in London, Nicodemus contacts Baz about a series of unexplained vampire disappearances. Mystery, romance, and sandwiches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**SIMON**

It’s a lovely early summer day in the Lake District. The meadow is blooming, there are sheep grazing peacefully in the next field over, and the smell of new-mown hay is being completely overpowered by the smell of fresh blood.

It’s a lot of blood.

I swallow down my nausea — _Ebb isn’t here. This isn’t Watford. This isn’t the tower._ This is just a totally different fucked-up situation I’ve landed myself in. 

I walk closer.

Closer inspection gets stains on my trackie bottoms, but fails to reveal anything new. It’s just a ton of blood on the grass, curdling in the summer sun. By the looks and the smell, it’s been out for at least a few hours… there are no bodies in the area. I already searched the edges of the field before I got the courage to approach the blood. (I don’t even have my sword. This was supposed to be a boring research trip.)

Poking at the circle of blood with a stick from one of the hedges fails to reveal anything new, so I take photos with my mobile and retreat back to the Land Rover. 

Inside the Land Rover, I make myself take a few deep breaths before I start trying to think. Calling the police seems — well, I’m trespassing here, and I have no explanation for the blood. And there’s no body.

I don’t even know it’s human blood.

Calling Professor Bunce is the obvious answer, since this is his survey project. The blood is in the exact center of one of the smaller holes I’m meant to be surveying. 

But he and Penny are away in the States for a few weeks, visiting Micah and giving presentations on the holes. I check my mobile — it’s only gone 10 in the morning, so in the States… Chicago would be….

It’s too early to call Professor Bunce.

I swallow again, and then pull my seatbelt on. 

By the time I’m out to the main roadway, the fresh air blowing in through the windows has cleared my mind a bit. I was meant to survey a group of several small holes today. If there is no blood in the other holes, I can relax. If there is blood in the other holes, it’ll be later in the day and I won’t be waking up Professor Bunce when I call him.

I mean, it can’t be related to magic — there _is_ no magic in the holes. Unless it’s grown back somehow… but Professor Bunce’s instruments say no.

I visit three more holes, driving across the Lake District under the sun and stopping for wandering sheep crossing the rutted lanes. Everything is the same as usual. Lovely scenery. No magic.

The fourth hole is centered on a car park at a transport cafe in the outskirts of Penrith. I walk between the parked trailers, hoping nobody asks me what I’m doing.

It takes a bit of finding, but there it is, between two parked lorries — a dull red stain on the pavement, extending at least several feet across. 

I take a photo of the staining with my mobile, and then poke around a bit more. Nothing else. Just the stain.

If it weren’t for the hole in the field, I’d never have noticed it was blood.

My original plan was to stay up North for several days, surveying the smaller holes, but this seems silly now. I need Professor Bunce’s records. I need help.

I make my way back to the Land Rover. I’m heading back to London.

**BAZ**

Nicodemus Petty is waiting in the shadows of a tree when I leave my Aunt Fiona’s place that morning.

He notices me, and then unfolds himself from the shadows. “Pitch.”

His voice is quiet, but he knows I can hear him from across the street. “Petty,” I respond.

He doesn’t say anything else. A few moments later, I cross the street to join him. “Why did you find me?”

“I was looking for your aunt,” he says, and his tongue presses at the gap where his eyeteeth used to be. “Where is she?”

“Hunting vampires,” I say, and watch him wince. After a long moment, I take pity on him. “In Prague. With Declan.”

“Ah.” He looks over at her building. “And she’ll be back —?”

“No idea,” I say. Not that I’d tell him if I had one. 

“I see,” he says, and squints up and down the street.

He seems to make his mind up about something. “Can we talk?” he asks.

“What about?”

“Not here,” he says. 

I know his skin, his eyes, are burning in the sunlight, because mine are too.

“I’m not following you to a third location,” I say. “But there’s a Starbucks down the road. If you happened to follow me there….”

He nods.

We walk silently, not quite together.

* * *

The interior of the Starbucks is blessedly dark and cave-like. I can’t get the baristas to make me a pumpkin mocha breve in summer, but I can order a chai tea latte over ice with a shot of raspberry, so I do.

Nicodemus orders a black coffee. He doesn’t add anything to it. Just like Aunt Fiona.  

“It’s like this,” he says. “Someone’s hunting vampires.”

My chai threatens to come out my nose. “And you’ve decided to ask the vampire hunter’s nephew about it?”

“I know it’s not Fi,” he says, swirling his cup. “We have an understanding.”

I contemplate what kind of understanding Nicodemus and Fiona may have, and then decide I probably don’t want to know. “So?”

“So it affects you, too, punk,” Nicodemus says.

“But it doesn’t.” I set the tea down on the table. “I get my blood from the butcher’s.”

Nicodemus starts laughing. “You think we don’t?” I keep my face blank, but he must be able to tell I’m confused. “None of us goes for human prey. You think the CID wouldn’t notice a bunch of bodies turning up over London? You think the _Coven_ wouldn’t notice?”

“I’ve never seen another vampire at the butcher’s,” I say.

“Which butcher are you using?” Nicodemus asks.

I don’t want to tell him.

“If it’s one of the halal places, of course you wouldn’t have seen any of the rest of us. Their blood tastes of plastic. Any vampire who knows anything goes to Mickey’s. He makes you bring back the jars, but —“ Nicodemus stops, like he's realized that he’s rambling. “I’m not getting on this. The point is, someone’s been hunting. And it’s not your Aunt Fiona. And whoever it is, they’re going after vamps who haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Apart from being vampires,” I murmur, but he’s got me wondering now. “I assume you’ve —“

“We’re looking into it ourselves,” Nicodemus says sharply. “We just need to know if someone from the Coven’s appointed another slayer.”

“I can ask,” I admit. Probably _should_ ask. I could be on the list. “How do I tell you what I find?”

“I’ll find you,” he says.

“A mobile would be easier.”

“It would,” he says. “Wouldn’t it.”

He gets up from the table, and I make my mind up — I have to say it. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

His shoulders slump forward, and I can tell he’s heard me.

“The Mage had already killed her,” I say. “She was already gone, before even Simon got there.” I swallow. “Even if you had — we wouldn’t have made it in time.”

Nicodemus stares off at the tile wall. “Well.”

I’m not sure what I expect him to say.

He pushes his tongue into the gap where his fang used to be. “You’ll ask about the vampires.”

“I will.”

“Well, then. I don’t see that there’s anything else to talk about.”

And he stalks out, into the sunlight, and the burning summer day.

**SIMON**

It’s a long drive back to London, and I end up stopping at a motorway service area in the mid-afternoon to call Penny and Professor Bunce.

I park the Land Rover, and then make sure my watch is on my wrist. The last time I forgot to check before going into a Normal place — well.

The watch was a gift from Baz and Penny. I think Baz did most of the work, but Penny did a lot of the research. It’s magic — it prevents Normals from seeing my wing or my tail. They did brilliant work on it.

Of course, the watch didn’t have space inside for an actual _watch_ , so it doesn’t work _as_ a watch. I have to pull out my mobile whenever Normals ask me for the time, which is awkward.

Inside the service area, I order chips and sit down to email Professor Bunce the photos before I call. 

Professor Bunce doesn’t answer, but Penny answers her mobile. “Simon?”

“Penny! Is your dad there?”

“I’m with Micah,” Penny says. 

I do the math on the time difference. Ah. “Sorry about that,” I say. “I was trying to reach your dad… there’s something in the holes.”

Penny’s instantly alert. She’d make a great bonety hunter if she ever decided she needed bones and teeth. “What?”

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” I say, but Penny can probably tell I’m lying.

Penny wears me down until I tell her, quietly — I’m not sure what the Normals in here would think about this if they overheard me.

“Stevie _Nicks_ ,” Penny says. “Simon, that is messed up.”

“I know,” I say. “Do you know where your dad is?”

“I think he’s teaching a seminar this morning,” she says. “Micah? Can I borrow your car?”

I hear Micah in the background, and then Penny’s back. “Keep trying to call him, Simon. He’s in Cleveland today. Micah says Chicago to Cleveland is too far for me to drive.”

“Say hi to Micah,” I say. 

“He says hi back,” Penny says. “Simon?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful, okay?”

**BAZ**

After Nicodemus leaves, I sit in the Starbucks and sip my raspberry chai, trying to figure out which way to move first.

The Coven — we have enough friends and relations _there_. Penny’s mum, or my father — he was brought back on after what all the old families have taken to calling the Recent Unpleasantness.

Or I could call Aunt Fi. But I’m not sure if I should. Do I want to bring her into this?

I worry at my straw with my eyetooth. Where to start.

In the end, my mobile solves the mystery of Mickey’s — there’s no butcher’s shop by that name in London, but a foodie forum post about making blood sausages suggests a likely candidate. 

I toss my cup and head back out into the burning sun.

At Mickey’s, a heavyset Normal in a bloodstained apron sells me two pints of cow’s blood in Mason jars. “You’ll need to bring the jars back,” he informs me.

“Of course,” I say, as if no other possibility had occurred to me. (Bunce will probably recycle them.)

I shake my head when he asks if I want to sign up for his email list. (A butcher’s with an email list?) He packs my glass-bottled blood into a carrier bag and throws in an ice pack. 

I retreat to the shop across the street, where I linger near the windows for long enough to see three more customers as pale and gray as me go in and leave with carrier bags of ice and blood-filled Mason jars.

So this part of Nicodemus’s story checks out. I slip out of the store.

Back at our flat, I take long enough to pour myself a small glass of Mickey’s best. The first sip confirms what Nicodemus told me: This blood is way better than the crap from the halal butcher I’ve been buying.

I put the jars into the fridge.

Now the question is — how to ask around about vampires? I can’t exactly call my father. He’s back on the Coven, but we still don’t talk about vampires. Ever. And he doesn’t talk to my stepmother about Coven business… I could ask Bunce to ask her mother, but whether she’d be able to… Or Dr. Wellbelove, but he only tolerates me; he hates the Pitches. And he doesn’t know I’m a vampire, unless Agatha told him. (Agatha probably told him.)

I head back out to clear my head.

* * *

When I come back, Snow’s trainers are by the door, stained in blood. _Crowley_ — my heart starts pounding and I draw my wand. “Snow?”

He comes out of Bunce's room. “Baz?” 

He’s got a distracted look on his face, and his bronzed curls are running riot on his head, like he’s been ripping his hands through them. But he’s in one piece, wings and tail and all.

“Chomsky, Snow,” I say, relaxing my wand hand. “Don’t do that to me.”

“Do what?”

“The _trainers_ ,” I say. Snow looks unharmed, but I notice there’s also blood on the cuffs of his trackie bottoms. “What have you been doing? Why are you covered in blood? And why are you back? I thought you were up North for another two days.”

“I came back,” Snow says.

“Obviously.” I step close enough to kiss him, and do. He’s got his cross on, for some reason. It’s under his shirt, but I can feel it. 

“Why did you come back?” I ask, pulling away. “Why are you covered in blood? And what are you doing in Bunce’s room?”

“She’s got all the whiteboards,” Snow says, like that explains everything. “And the blood’s from the circle.” He looks down at himself. “And I’m hardly covered. Nobody in the chip shop noticed.”

“Can you start at the beginning?” I ask.

Snow takes his mobile out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Check the photos.”

I raise an eyebrow, and then take the mobile.

The pictures explain — nothing. Except why Snow’s trainers are ruined. 

“That’s the center of one of the holes,” Snow says. “Well, two of them, actually. Listen, can you smell anything on the blood on my trainers? Like maybe what type of blood it is?”

“I’m a vampire, not a mass spectrometer.” I flip through more of the photos on Snow’s mobile. Before the blood photos started, Snow had a roaring trade in selfies in front of motorway cafes. I surreptitiously send myself one of the better photos of Snow, and then look up. “What have you put on Bunce’s whiteboard so far?”

Snow shrugs, and then rolls it into the living room. (Bunce has many whiteboards. Most of them are on the wall, but this one is special. It was a gift from Snow last Christmas. Bunce really loves whiteboards.)

At the center of the board, Snow has written BLOOD, all in capitals. Around the word blood is a circle, which he has drawn a little line from, to write CIRCLE (NO MAGIC). The rest of the board is blank.

“I didn’t get very far,” he says, flushing. “I’m waiting for Professor Bunce to call. I just emailed him the photos.”

The whiteboard has nothing added by the time Professor Bunce calls. Professor Bunce has no information to add, but based on Snow’s side of the conversation, it sounds like he’s going to be calling Penny’s mum and some of the mages on the Coven.

“Yeah,” Snow says into the phone. “I can check some other holes.”

He hangs up the call, and I look up from the sink, where I’m trying to spell away the worst of the blood from his trainers. “I’m going with you,” I say.

“What?”

“If you’re looking into who’s leaving enormous amounts of blood around the countryside, you’re not doing it alone and without magic.”

Snow looks pained. “The blood’s in _holes_ , Baz. You wouldn’t have magic either.”

He’s not wrong. But I’m still not letting him go alone. And it’s not like I had anything keeping me in London… except, Crowley, I do. “Simon?”

He’s staring at the white board as if four words and a circle can explain the universe. “Yeah?”

“Can you do a favor for me before we go?”

“Yeah,” Snow says, turning to me. “Anything. What is it?”

 _Ask the Bunces about the vampires,_ I think, but do not say. _Ask if someone is trying to kill us._ But I find I can’t say that.

“Change into different trousers,” I say instead. “You look ridiculous with blood on the outside.”


	2. Chapter 2

**BAZ**

We head to the Bunces’ after Snow has showered and changed.

Snow knocks at their front door, and then it’s a few minutes before the other Professor Bunce, Penny’s mum, answers, laptop in hand. “Ah, Simon, come in…. Basilton, good to see you too.”

Inside, it’s the usual Bunce chaos. One of Bunce’s siblings is making a cheese toastie. I can see Snow stare at it — _Cheese. Bread._ — but he shakes his head and turns back to Dr. Bunce.

“Professor Bunce asked me to —“

“I know,” Professor Bunce says. “Martin said to let you right on up.”

Snow nods. “Thanks.”

He runs up the stairs, but I stay behind to talk with Professor Bunce for a bit. She’s the headmistress of Watford — surely if there were a new initiative to kill vampires, she’d be aware of it?

But I can’t find a casual way to bring it up, and when Professor Bunce is distracted by an incoming Skype call, I slip up the stairs after Snow.

Snow’s crouched down in front of an enormous map, taking notes while he talks to Professor Bunce (Professor Martin Bunce) on speaker. It’s all dates and readings. He doesn’t even notice me come in.

The office is full of piles. After looking at the maps over Simon’s shoulders for a few moments, I find a stack of recent Magickal Registers next to one of the chairs, and settle down to read. The Register contains notes of the Coven’s meetings — surely there’d be something about a new vampire eradication campaign in here.

I’m through the past six months, with no mentions of vampires at all apart from a discussion of funding for Fiona’s task force, when Snow hangs up the phone.

“Hey, Baz.”

“Hey yourself.” I put down the Register.

“How much did you hear?”

“I was reading,” I say, waving the Register.

Snow looks briefly worried. “You’ll put that back?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was right here.” The pile might be out of order now, but I doubt that either Professor Bunce will notice, or will know to blame Snow if they do. “What did you figure out?”

Snow runs his hands through his hair again. “Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Well, not really… nothing useful?”

I reach out for Snow’s hand, and he lets me take it. “Would it be better if we found you a cheese toastie before you tried to explain?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Snow breathes. “But I have to —“ He points over at the maps.

“Carry on,” I say, releasing his hand.

Snow can be efficient when there’s food on the line. He uses his mobile to take up-close photographs of several more of the maps on the wall, takes a few more notes, and then is ready to go.

On our way out, Professor Bunce is buried in her laptop and just waves to us.

I wouldn’t have asked her about the vampires anyway.

**SIMON**

On the way back to the flat, the cheese toastie turns into naan and takeaway curry (okay, curries). Baz starts opening containers on the table while I dig into the fridge for drinks.

There’s a couple new jars of blood on the door… weird, when did — “Baz?”

Baz looks up from the rice. “Yeah?”

“When did your butcher start selling blood in glass?”

“I tried a different place,” Baz says cooly. “It’s sustainably harvested.”

“What, like they give the cow an IV once a week?” I think about this. “That might be worse.”

“No worse than milk and butter,” Baz says, and this reminds me. I pull butter out of the fridge.

I’m almost finished with my second piece of hot buttered naan when I remember that Baz still doesn’t know what Professor Bunce and I don’t know.

“There’s nothing really special about these holes,” I say. “Except that they’re small, and old. They’re from before…” _Before the holes metastasized,_ Professor Bunce says in my head, but I use the real reason. “From before I went to Watford.”

Baz nods. “How much smaller than the other holes?”

“It’s all over the place, size-wise,” I say. “But they’re pretty small.”

“Like someone doesn’t want to spend any more time there than they need to?” Baz says. “Or like they’re experimenting?”

I stare down at my curry; it’s not giving me any answers. “We don’t know.”

“So the maps you photographed?”

“Some of the other old holes,” I say. “Dr. Bunce thought it would make sense to check similar holes. I have a list of a few more near London that he wanted us to try. He’s going to have one of his other assistants who has magic head up to the ones in the Lake District, just in case the instruments weren’t working properly.”

“That makes sense,” Baz says. “Tomorrow?”

I nod.

“I’ll join you,” he says. And then he’s quiet, like there’s something else he wants to say.

But he takes a bit more curry, instead.

**BAZ**

Snow insists on taking the Land Rover.

When the Mage died, one of the things we all forgot was that he had made Snow his _heir_. In practice, this meant that Snow got the Land Rover and a bunch of tights… Snow hung on to the Land Rover. I don’t know if he kept the tights.

I’m not sure why Snow insists on driving it. He says it’s because the Land Rover is a practical vehicle to bring out to the field — “Some of the holes are in the middle of nowhere, Baz.” But I think it’s because he still thinks of the Mage as his father, or as close as he’s going to get.

It’s not as if my father is going to adopt him.

I try to argue him into taking my car (Aunt Fiona’s car, she didn’t leave the keys but I’ve spelled it), but Snow is having none of it. “There are sheep,” he says.

I briefly imagine Fiona’s MG in a field. “Fine.”

We spend the next few days crisscrossing the countryside. Snow eats in cafes and I bring takeout back to the Land Rover to eat on the way to our next destination. (Snow insists on driving, too; he says I’m a roadway menace.)

We visit holes in fields, and holes on National Trust land, and a hole in the center of a roundabout (Snow nearly gets creamed by a van, walking while taking notes, but I pull him back in time), and holes in neat neighborhoods of semi-detached houses. Holes in industrial estate car parks. There’s one hole in the center of a graveyard, which seems like the most likely candidate for me. But none of the holes have been filled with blood.

We drive through holes, too, on our way to smaller and more likely holes. I still can’t abide the feeling of being in a hole — the _snap_ when I cross the boundary, when I suddenly feel my connection with the world cut.

It makes me feel even sorrier for Snow, who doesn’t seem to notice the boundaries at all.

We’re walking through the car park of a shopping plaza in Cardiff, trying not to look like we’re car thieves, when I finally spot something.

Not blood. I would have smelt _that_ at the edge of the car park.

It’s a small pile of ash, at the very center of the hole, almost beneath a battered Mini.

I know what it is immediately.

**SIMON**

Baz drags me over to a Mini after he spots it. He points down. “See that, Snow? Get your mobile out. We need pictures.”

I stare at him. “It’s not blood.”

He swallows. “It’s a vampire. What’s left of one, I mean.”

Shit. “Really?”

Baz nods. “I’m — pretty sure.”

I can tell a part of him is back in the nursery with his mum, and I find myself slipping an arm around him and holding him. He lets me, for a moment, and then pulls away.

“We need pictures before the owner of the Mini comes back,” he says, looking at the shops.

I nod, and photograph the tiny pile of ash from all sides. It’s hardly anything — if it had been raining, it would have washed away, we’d have missed it entirely.

I wonder what else we _did_ miss, at the other holes. The blood in the first hole was almost fresh — in Penrith it was nearly gone. We can guess dates when these happened, but we can't guess at what we haven't seen.

I look up from my measurements. Baz looks even paler than usual. “Baz? Are you okay?”

He swallows. “It’s not what you think, Snow.”

“It’s not a dead vampire?”

“No,” he says. “It’s definitely a dead vampire. But…” He swallows again. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

He’s got me worried now. Baz is usually only this hesitant when he’s talking about his father. “I’m almost done with the measurements.”

“Yeah,” Baz says, still looking down at the little pile of ash. “Yeah. Can we leave the hole first?”

I had forgotten about that. “Of course we can.”

We leave the car park just ahead of the Mini’s owner, an older woman with a towering trolley of groceries who gives us a sharp look when she comes out of the market.

Baz relaxes a little when we leave the circle, but he’s still tense by the time we find a Starbucks.

Inside, Baz negotiates with the barista for some raspberry tea thing, and I order a ham and cheese toastie and a cherry brownie and a tea. (It’s three in the afternoon, and I’m starved. I haven’t had lunch for two and a half hours.) Baz’s drink is a weird muddy pink when it comes.

We grab a table at the back, and Baz surreptitiously draws his wand to cast **Under the bell jar** as we sit, so none of the Normals will pay what we’re saying any attention.

And then he stares down at his straw.

I eat my toastie, trying to wait him out.

I’m halfway into the second half of my sandwich and wondering if I should order another when Baz finally breaks.

“Right,” he says. “I didn’t know how to tell you this.”

He’s worrying me again, but I set down the toastie and take his hand. He hesitates for a moment, and then lets me.

“Nicodemus found me,” he says. “Outside my aunt Fiona’s.”

I nod. “What happened?”

“Nothing bad,” Baz says quickly. (I know what he’s thinking — he still feels badly, that they left Nicodemus behind when they came to Watford the Christmas before last. There’s nothing Nicodemus could have done. But.) “It’s — something else.”

I squeeze his hand and wait for him to go on.

“Nicodemus said that vampires have been disappearing. He asked me to ask around for him, since Aunt Fiona is in Prague.”

I finish off the last of the cheese toastie and my cherry brownie while Baz tells me the rest — the butcher’s shop, the Register… “You didn’t call anyone?” I ask.

He takes a sip of his weird pink-brown drink before answering. “I couldn’t think how to explain.”

“Ah.” I pull out my mobile. It’s late in the States, but not to late to call. “We’ve found vampire ashes in one of the holes now. You won’t have to.”

“You think they’re related?”

I shrug. “If they’re not, we’ll figure it out. I can still ask.”

Baz takes another sip, and then nods. “Okay. Call away.”

**BAZ**

Snow calls both Professor Bunces. Neither has heard anything about a new vampire task force. Neither has Dr. Wellbelove, although he has a lot of questions for Snow about the blood.

“Dr. Wellbelove says whoever’s blood it was probably didn’t make it,” Snow says when the call ends. (I glance around at the Normal patrons, but none of them are paying attention. The spell must still be working.)

“You’re not even sure it’s human,” I point out.

“Yeah.” Snow looks down at the crumbs of his food. “Look, I hate to say it, but I think we need to go back to Nicodemus.”

I swallow. “Alright.”

“Do you have his mobile number?”

“Vampires don’t use _mobiles_ , Snow,” I snap, and then Snow looks down at the mobile in my hand. “I meant….” I don’t know what I meant. “If Nicodemus has a mobile, he didn’t give me the number.”

“How were you supposed to find him?” Snow asks.

“He said he’d contact me.”

“How did he contact you the first time?”

“Saw me coming out of Aunt Fiona’s flat,” I say, and take another sip of my raspberry chai.

Snow’s nose wrinkles. “What were you doing there?”

“I do still live there, you know.” It’s technically even true. I spend all my days and nights at Snow and Bunce’s, but my mail still goes to Aunt Fiona’s. I stop by a few times a week to pick it up, water the plants, make sure nobody’s broken in….

“Oh.” Snow looks surprised, like he didn’t realize this. “Does the flat have a number and an answerphone? He might have left a message there.”

I’m not sure what Fiona’s flat has. “Probably not.”

Snow starts getting up. “We should go back to London.”

I look down at my raspberry chai, and then toss it in the trash. The ice has melted, and it’s gone all watery.

* * *

It’s a long drive back to London. Snow takes us directly to Fiona’s flat, where the dust has grown thicker and the plants need watering.   There is no answerphone, but there’s an envelope stuck to the door with tape.

“What if it’s for your aunt?” Snow asks.

“Hardly likely,” I say, peeling the tape carefully so it doesn’t damage the paint on the door. (It must be from Nicodemus -- any Mage with a wand would just use a sticking charm.)

The envelope holds a small card, which has a phone number on it and nothing else.

Fiona still has a landline, probably because she’s forgotten it’s there. (I pay her bills every month — she’s too busy with Declan over in Prague, and it’s all Pitch family money anyway.) Simon insists on calling the number from that phone, not from one of our mobiles.

When the number rings, it goes straight to voicemail. “No luck,” I tell Snow.

He shivers. “Fine. Let’s try from our flat. This place is freezing.”

“Aunt Fiona likes the air con,” I say. “She has me leave it on even when she’s gone.”

Snow shivers, probably to be theatrical about it. “Let’s go home.”

“I’m not staying here,” I say, suddenly realizing what Snow’s been saying, what he needs to hear me say. That home is with him and with Bunce, not here in a cold and empty flat. “We’re going home.”

Snow swallows. “Okay.”

* * *

Back at the flat, the blood in the fridge has gone all manky and clotted. I tip it down the drain and run the water to wash it away. We should have picked up blood on the way… too late now.

Snow’s studying Bunce’s board again, stretched out on the sofa with a slice of toasted naan he’s wrapped around hot butter. The naan came from the freezer and is probably disgusting.

“I have to run down to the basement,” I tell Snow. “Pest control.”

He looks worried. “Want me to come?”

“Crowley. No. Stop asking.”

“Oh. Are you — you haven’t hunted in a basement since….”

“I do it enough to keep the rat population down,” I say, annoyed. “If there’s ever another plague, you and Bunce will be safe.”

“And you,” Snow says.

I swallow. I do need something; his pulse in his throat is more alluring than usual. “Yes, I’d be safe from the plague, but for quite different reasons.”

Snow finishes the last bite of his buttered naan. “Any reason why you need to eat down our rats tonight?”

“Blood in the fridge went off,” I say. I can’t believe he didn’t smell it when I tipped it down the drain.

It’s been a while since I was reduced to hunting in Snow’s basement, so I find rats easily. The drained bodies go in the rubbish tip.

Upstairs, Snow has expanded on the board. He’s added another circle with VAMPIRE ASHES in the center. Off to the side, he’s added a list to one side of the board.

“It’s theories about why someone might do something in a hole,” Snow says, pointing to the list.

_Doing something that would be detected by magic_  
_Ritual to try to bring magic back_  
_Ritual to keep magic away_  
_Needed to off humans + vampire, chose center of holes on accident_  
_Normals, found holes, experimenting_

“I think you can rule out Normals,” I say.

“Don’t they believe in ley lines and things?” Snow asks. “Normals have a lot of theories about magic. They’re mostly wrong, but maybe one of them found the hole…” His voice runs out.

“I still hope you’re wrong. If it’s Normals, we’re never going to find who’s doing this.”

Snow flops back down on the sofa. “Fine. What’s your theory?”

“I don’t have one,” I admit. I spin Bunce’s whiteboard to the other side and write QUESTIONS at the top. _Why holes in Wales and the Lake District?_ I write, in much neater handwriting than Snow’s. _Why older, smaller holes? Should we check larger holes? Why vampires AND the living?_

“You’re alive,” Snow says, reading my last question.

“I know you like to think so,” I say. But I let him pull me down to the sofa next to him, let him pull be into his arms, let him kiss me without worrying about the taste of rat blood.

He’s Simon Snow, and he’s not worried about vampires at all.

**SIMON**

The next morning, Baz lets me call the number from Fiona’s door from his mobile.

I’ve already spoken with Penny’s mum. She says they’ve called an emergency session of the Coven — the blood by itself wasn’t enough, but she called the vampire ashes _worrying._

_I_ didn’t tell her what we heard from Nicodemus — we don’t know enough about that yet, and anyway it’s Baz’s business. (Unless it becomes part of the hole investigation.) In any case, Penny’s mum seemed to think that the Coven would add investigators to look into the holes properly — maybe Baz and I can do more good following up on the vampire lead.

The number goes to voicemail, and I don’t leave a message. But a few minutes later, someone rings back, from a different number.

I put the call on speaker. “You’re a tough one to get ahold of,” says Nicodemus’s voice.

“I did ask for a number,” Baz says cooly. “I have Simon Snow here with me, by the way.”

“Hello,” I say, feeling silly.

Nicodemus is silent. I'm assuming we’ve dropped the call when he speaks. “Fine. Do you have what I asked for?”

Baz raises an eyebrow. “That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Listen, we don’t know what’s going on, but we may have some information,” I say. “Can we meet?”

There’s an even longer pause this time. Baz looks at me. I shrug.

Finally, Nicodemus speaks again. “Fine. Where?”

“Pret a Manger down the road from Fiona’s,” I say. “Ten.” Nicodemus already knows about Fiona’s. And I’m hungry.

Nicodemus rings off without saying anything.

“We are not taking a vampire to bloody Pret a Manger,” Baz snaps.

I shrug. “Too late now.”

* * *

Baz insists on getting to Pret before Nicodemus. He also doesn’t approve of me buying egg and cress sandwiches… he buys a black coffee, which is completely unlike him.

The coffee is explained when Nicodemus shows up and orders the same.

He stands over our table for a moment before sitting down. “Snow.”

I nod at him. He’s got on another cheap suit. He still looks like an older, worn-around-the-edges version of Ebb. “I’m sorry about your sister. I miss her too.”

“She talked about you,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee.

Baz’s face is blank. “I didn’t know you were allowed to talk to mages.”

Nicodemus looks away. “I wasn’t allowed to talk to her. She — at Christmas she’d come outside and talk to the backyard. If I happened to be there….”

“She missed you,” I say, fiercely, thinking of Ebb’s face when she wrote his name in the fire. “She loved you.”

Nicodemus looks down at his coffee for a long moment. “This isn’t why we’re here.”

“The Coven hasn’t approved any new projects,” I say. “We’ve checked with everyone.”

Nicodemus looks at my eyes, like he can compel me to answer him without a wand. “So why did we need to meet?”

“Because there’s something else going on,” I say. Baz and I discussed what to tell Nicodemus before he came, and I’m ignoring our agreement… but maybe Nicodemus knows something. “We think they got caught up in something else, something that might not be about vampires. The Coven’s investigating it.”

“Something else?” Nicodemus asks.

“Someone’s been killing,” Baz says. “We’re not sure why. We’ve found… signs.”

Nicodemus leans forward. “How many vampires?”

“Only one,” Baz says. "Or only one that we've found." He surprises me by getting out his mobile and showing Nicodemus the photograph of the ashes.

Nicodemus looks ill, for a moment, and then sits back. “When? Where?”

“Wales,” Baz says. “Within the past few days.”

“It’s Christy,” Nicodemus says. “She went to Wales for a yoga course and… didn’t come back. Merlin.”

I glance over at Baz. Vampires… on a yoga course?

Nicodemus sees the look, and glares at me. “Look, you have to understand — we work together, those of us in London. We watch one another. We’re not stupid. We know that the CID will notice if people start turning up without blood. Or the Coven. So we — we have rules. Vampires who don’t follow the rules… well, they don’t make it very long, because they could expose all of us.”

“How many other vampires have gone?” I ask softly.

Nicodemus shakes his head. “At least three others, that I know of.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

Nicodemus shrugs. “Hard to be sure. Some of them may have disappeared of their own accord. There are other places than London… places where a vampire could hunt. But Christy, she was a good woman — just Turned last year in fact, still trying to make peace with it all. She was a vegetarian before she was Turned, if you can believe that.”

“Can you get us any information on the yoga course?” I ask.

“I doubt it,” Nicodemus says heavily. “But I’ll ask around. How many others are dead?”

“We’re not sure,” I say. “But not all of them are vampires.”

“Were vampires,” Baz says, taking a sip of black coffee and grimacing.

**BAZ**

Snow reminds me that we’re out of blood, so we stop by a butcher’s shop on the way back to the flat. Not Mickey’s — I haven’t thought to bring his bottles back. (That blood was good, though. I’ll have to stop Bunce from recycling his bottles.)

Snow gets a call from Bunce’s mother once we’re back at the flat. The Coven have called a meeting about the situation, and they’ve asked him to come. Just him. Not me. (They probably don’t know I’m involved. It’s probably best if they _don’t_ know I’m involved.)

“Professor Bunce thinks they’ll put proper investigators on this,” Snow says, looking through our closet for trousers that aren’t trackie bottoms.

“Like who?” I ask. “Are they sending Bunce back from America?”

Snow sighs. “We do need magickal law enforcement, don’t we.” (Bunce's latest hobby-horse.) 

“It might help.” Although I suppose that’s what Fiona’s doing, over in Prague. The Coven must have more Fionas.

I take pity on Simon and find him decent trousers and a shirt that doesn’t look like it’s been down a numpty hole.

“Thanks,” he says.

I wrap my arms around him. “Be careful.”

“I’m just going to the Bunce’s,” he says.

“Yeah,” I mutter, into his shoulder. “But still.”

Nicodemus said he’d look into Christy’s yoga course for us, but of course he hasn’t texted us anything, so I haven’t anything to look into while Simon’s gone. I pour myself a tumbler of blood and sit down at the computer to fret.

**SIMON**

When I get back from the meeting, Baz isn’t in the living room. His computer is open, on the coffee table, but he’s not there.

I kick off my trainers. “Baz?”

I find him in our bedroom, staring up at the ceiling from our bed. He doesn’t look over when I come in.

“Baz?”

He turns at that. “Snow.”

“Baz. What’s wrong?”

He sits up, but his movements look heavy, like he’s been weighted down again. I sit down next to him and wrap my arms around him.

“How did the meeting go?” he asks, his breath cool against my neck.

I shrug. “Mostly they just talked a lot.”

“I could have guessed that,” Baz says, sounding a bit more like himself. “What did they say?”

“Lots of things. Like… oh dear, why is this happening, who is doing this, how will we find them. It wasn’t a full Coven meeting, but apparently they’ll be having that in a week or two to get everyone up to date. But Professor Bunce was right — they’ve pulled people from Magickal Safety and the Anti-Goblin Task Force to look into this. Also a couple of the teachers from Watford… good thing this happened in the summer, isn’t it?”

“Who?” Baz asks. He still hasn’t really moved, except to slump against me.

“Merlin, I don’t know. They’ve cut me out of it.” I try not to sound bitter, but I probably don’t manage it.

Because in some terrible, fucked-up way, the holes are _mine_ — I caused them, and this feels like my problem to fix. But I can’t say that — not to Penny, not to the Professor Bunces, and certainly not to Baz. They’ll all point out that this is a Magickal problem, and as much as I might want to be part of the Magickal world, I’m not.

I didn’t tell the Coven about the vampires, other than the pile of ash.

I start rubbing circles on Baz’s back — something’s obviously still wrong, but he won’t tell me any faster if I start pushing him on it.

Finally, Baz pulls away and flops back on our bed. “My father rang.”

I keep my expression neutral, as much as I can, but I feel my chest twist with anger. Baz’s father has ignored him for the past year. His stepmother reaches out, but his father’s been trying to forget that his queer son’s shacked up with a former Chosen One.

“What did he want?”

“He’s throwing a _house party_ ,” Baz says, spitting out the words. “At the new house.”

“Oh?” I take Baz’s hand.

Baz squeezes my hand back, but doesn’t look at me. “A bloody house party.”

I think about a year of ignoring your son, and then I think about not having a father. “I wouldn’t mind if you went,” I say. “I’ll hang out with Penny’s family and eat butter. Don’t worry about me.”

“That’s the thing,” Baz says, his mouth twisting. “You’re invited.”

I’m not sure how to take this. I take a deep breath, like my therapist taught me. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” Baz laughs. “Yes. I don’t know.”

I lay back on the bed next to him. “That covers all the possibilities.”

We stare up at the ceiling together, and then Baz speaks. “I think — I imagined him ringing. And every time I imagined it, he’d invite just me and then I’d have this grand strop about how we were together and he needed to accept that and I wasn’t going anywhere you weren’t going.”

I smile. “And he took away your ammunition?”

“It’s not that,” Baz says. “Not really. It’s — why is he inviting you? I can’t think of a reason.”

“It’s not like I’m a terrible house guest,” I say.

Baz rolls over to look at me. “Snow. Last time you spent time at my house, we had to evacuate.”

“That was the Humdrum’s fault,” I say. “Do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Baz says. And he leans in to kiss me.

I know he’s changing the topic.

I let him.


	3. Chapter 3

**SIMON**

Baz’s family’s new house is way less scary than I expected. It’s old, but in that fancy-lines way that looks nice, not creepy or anything. 

“It’s Georgian,” Baz informs me when he sees me staring up at it.

“Sure,” I say, hefting our bags out of the boot of his Aunt Fiona’s MG. (Baz insisted on me bringing my sword, but I’m leaving it in the boot. I’m not great at fancy parties but I’m pretty sure you don’t bring swords for a family weekend.)

Baz took over packing for us — I would just throw trackie bottoms and tees into a backpack if he let me. Baz does not approve of trackie bottoms. He’s packed us each a bag this time around. Probably because of all the different clothing we’ll need. His stepmum probably has _events_ planned.

“I’m not sure what my stepmother is planning for sleeping arrangements,” Baz says. “I don’t have a room here.”

“That’s fine.”

“And I don’t —“

I look over at him. His face is very still, but I’ve got years of experience at deciphering Baz — he’s _nervous_. Over his family.

“Hey,” I say. “It’ll be fine, won’t it? Your aunt Fiona likes me.”

“You killed the Mage,” Baz says. “Fiona can forgive you anything because of that. And she doesn’t mind that I’m queer. It’s — different for my father.”

“Well, maybe this is an olive branch,” I say. My hands are full of suitcase, but I knock against his shoulder with mine. “It’ll be fine.”

Baz swallows, and nods.

It’s Baz’s sister Mordelia who opens the door to us. She’s wearing a sundress printed with rainbows and a sparkly black hair bow. 

She wrinkles her nose when she sees me. “Why does he have wings?”

“Because he does,” Baz says cooly. 

“He’s less dirty than last time,” she says, like it’s an admission. “Fine. Come in.”

She stands back from the door. “Mum! The Chosen One and Baz are here!”

Baz’s stepmum looks harassed. “There you are, Basilton.” She hugs him. “It’s good to see you. Finally.”

Baz doesn’t really hug her back. “It’s good to see you too.”

She turns to face me. “And Mr. Snow. Thank you for coming.”

Baz rehearsed me on my lines on the drive up here. “Thank you for having me,” I say, dropping a suitcase so I can shake her hand. “You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you,” she says. But the pinch of her lips reminds me of what happened to her last home, the last time I visited the Grimms.

“You’ve plenty of time before dinner to change. Basilton, we’ve put you in the blue room, you know where it is. Let me show you to your room, Mr. Snow.”

I look over at Baz — separate rooms. His expression tells me he was expecting this. I hand over his suitcase and follow his stepmum down the hall.

**BAZ**

Mordelia follows me up the stairs to the Blue Room. 

Snow and my stepmother are walking toward the other wing of the house — apparently Father has decided that separation is the best policy.

It’s fine. I’ll change for dinner in the room they assign, but they can’t watch the doors all night. And Snow is safe with Daphne. She’s been the one keeping me in touch with the family. I don’t think she likes Snow, but she won’t do anything to hurt him.

The Blue Room looks out over the gardens, with a wide window seat surrounded by blue curtains. The walls are papered in a print which looks antique but is clearly new. My stepmother has redecorated here, as she never dared to in our old house, which was a Pitch family house. This property belongs to the Grimms. Daphne must have been emboldened by the move.

Mordelia trails me into my temporary bedroom. “Why did you come?” she asks.

“It’s family,” I tell her. “Snow tells me that’s important. He doesn’t have one, so I assume he would know.”

She considers this. “Mum wanted to invite you both last year.”

I set my suitcase down on the luggage rack and start rummaging through. Shoe bag, proper socks, shirt and suit…. Snow had to use my smaller suitcase, the one without a proper interior compartment for suits. I should have told him to ask Vera to steam his suit. (Not that he would have remembered.)

Mordelia’s still there when I turn around. “Father told her your… Chosen One… would visit over his dead body.”

I sigh. “He didn’t use Simon’s name, did he.”

“He used a word I’m not supposed to use,” Mordelia informs me. But that hasn’t stopped her before. I think she might be trying to spare my feelings.

“So why did he invite both of us?”

“Something’s going on,” Mordelia says. “Something I don’t know about.”

I turn back to my suit. Despite careful packing, it’s showing creases. I turn on the shower in the en suite and hang the suit inside to relax. “Are you playing Nancy Drew?”

“No,” Mordelia says, adjusting her headband. “But Mum and I don’t know why Father changed his mind. I thought you should know.”

I shut the bathroom door to concentrate the steam. “Thank you.”

She looks up at me. “Mum and I miss you.”

“I know,” I say. I’ve never spent much time with my half-siblings — even less over the past year. Daphne brought them in to London for a few days to visit, but a day or two having tea and visiting the Eye — it’s not the same. “Perhaps we can visit more often, now.”

Mordelia doesn’t say anything, but from her expression, I can tell she’s not holding out much hope.

* * *

I find Vera before dinner, and ask her to sort out Snow’s suit. Snow himself is nowhere to be found.

A quick finding charm indicates that he’s in the stables — I follow it outside, to the barn. It smells of horses, and I step carefully. I should have waited to dress for dinner. 

Daphne is showing Snow two ponies they must have bought at the twins’ last birthday. The ponies are shorter than Snow, but he looks nervous — the ponies don’t look happy about his wings, either.

“Baz,” Snow says, looking relieved. 

“Snow. Mother.”

“I was just about to show Mr. Snow back to his room,” Daphne says.

“Call me Simon, please,” Snow says.

“I’d be happy to show Simon his room,” I say. “Which room is he in?”

“Your father’s in the library,” Daphne says. “Why don’t you join him there, and we’ll meet you there before dinner? Our guests will be arriving shortly.”

Snow looks up at me, and I shrug. Father hadn’t mentioned anything about guests.

* * *

The library at this house has always been terrible. It’s full of old agricultural publications (that’s the Grimm influence) and old leather-bound sets of things like Bowdlerized Shakespeare that some ancient Grimm relative bought and didn’t care about. They fill space on the shelves, but if you try to read them, you discover that they’ve been chewed by mice and worms.

I was expecting Father to have moved at least some of the books from the Pitch library in Hampshire — counting on it, in fact. We — the Pitches, anyway — have books that the Coven couldn’t dream of. It’s one of the reasons I agreed to come — the chance to look through the library for anything that could explain sacrificing both vampires and something with blood. (If anyone would have books on blood sacrifices, it’s us.)

I’m scanning the lower shelves for Pitch family books when Father walks in. “Basilton.”

“Hello, Father.” I keep my face blank.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, but I notice he’s keeping his distance.

“Likewise.” I look around the library, like I’m changing the topic. “Where are the books from Hampshire?”

Father coughs. “Still in Hampshire.”

“Any reason?” I ask.

“Hampshire is a Pitch family estate,” Father says. “By rights, those books belong to yourself and Fiona.”

This isn’t an answer. 

“It’s good to see you,” Father says, again. “Where is… Mr. Snow?”

“I assume he’s in his room,” I say, watching Father’s nose flare slightly at the words. “He should be here shortly.”

Actually, several of Father’s guests have arrived before Snow and his suit make it to the library. He’s wearing his watch, so his wings are temporarily suppressed. He catches my eyes from across the room. 

Simon Snow still looks devastating in a suit. Or more than — he’s devastating in those abhorrent trackie bottoms. In proper clothing, he’s — breathtaking. 

His cheeks are flushed when he greets my father. “Mr. Grimm. Thank you for inviting us.”

My father’s face is perfectly, properly, politely blank. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Snow. Allow me to introduce you to our guests.”

I’m not sure where Daphne found these guests — or perhaps it was Father? They’ve invited several of the Old Families, who I know, if not well. And then there’s a short, round man wearing a shiny suit and a porkpie hat — he’s left the hat on, even though Daphne clearly doesn’t approve.

The man in the porkpie hat is introduced as Mr. Smythe. Snow nods politely, but Smythe reaches out to shake Snow’s hand. “Simon Snow. A pleasure.”

At dinner, Snow has been seated at Daphne’s end of the table, across from Smythe. I’m on the far end, next to Father. Perhaps Father thinks he can separate us for good if he can just keep us far enough apart for one weekend. 

Snow looks miserable until the food shows up, at which time he begins alternating between stuffing his face and looking lost. Daphne must remember his last visit, because the food is plentiful.

Father isn’t talking to Snow, but Smythe is. “So. Mr. Snow. How exactly did you defeat the Humdrum?”

Snow looks to be choking on a mouthful of potato. “Er?”

“We don’t like to discuss it,” I put in from the far end of the table, pitching my voice low so they’ll have to lean forward to listen.

“What?” Smythe snorts. “It’s the only topic we could possibly have in common.”

“Try the weather,” I snap.

But Smythe doesn’t. For the rest of the meal, my father looks on with an unreadable face while Smythe tries to ask Simon about The Humdrum, the holes, his magic…. Daphne and the others try to change the topic from time to time, but Smythe always brings it back. By the end of the meal, Simon’s hunched defensively over his plate, giving Smythe shrugs and monosyllabic grunts.

I’m relieved when the time comes for Daphne to bring the women through to the drawing room, and I can get up and come sit near Snow. 

Father brings out the good port, which both Snow and I decline. Oddly, so does Mr. Smythe, although Father and his other male guests partake.

Mr. Smythe has given up on his questioning of Snow, but he’s still watching him. 

Father isn’t — he isn’t looking at Snow at all. He’s discussing Magickal seed preservation with one of his guests while Snow and I look awkwardly at one another and try to ignore Mr. Smythe’s eyes. 

Finally, Father gets up and allows us to join the women in the drawing room. 

Daphne looks up at me as we walk in. “Basilton, you look fatigued. Would you like to call it an early night?”

She means I look hungry. “I’m quite alright.”

I’m not leaving Snow alone.

**SIMON**

I spend the time in the drawing room chatting with Baz’s stepmum about Watford. She’s nice enough — but it seems like she’s feeling weird about something. Probably understandable; it’s not every day that your stepson brings his boyfriend for the weekend. 

Once we’re finally able to leave, and I get back to my bedroom, I pull off the suit, leaving it on the floor, and pull on a pair of trackie bottoms and a t-shirt. It feels better. Much better.

But I’m not sure what to do now — I assume Baz will come. Probably. But he may need to eat first. He ate almost nothing at dinner. He spent the entire meal glaring at Mr. Smythe and making sarcastic comments about the weather. 

I end up curling up on the upholstered chair and staring out at the darkened grounds. This house is much less creepy than Baz’s family’s old place — no wraiths or anything.

But I’m alone, and Baz’s father hates me, and really, I just want Baz.

I stare out into the darkness. There are lights highlighting the landscaping, but they just make the shadows behind look deeper. 

Finally, I hear a light tap at my door.

I fling myself out of the chair to open it. “Baz?”

He’s wearing a posh dressing gown, something that looks silky and expensive. It’s a dark blue-gray that matches his eyes. “Snow.”

I stand back to let him slip inside. “Did you get to eat?”

“I got enough,” he says. He draws the curtains. “I’m so sorry about this.”

I shrug. “Why?”

Baz doesn’t answer, just wraps his arms around me, under my wings.

“It’s alright,” I say softly, holding him, my hands making small circles on the silky fabric of his dressing gown. “It’s alright.”

He pulls back to look at me. “I don’t know what they want.”

I think about that, as I look up into his eyes. He’s right — this visit makes no sense. His stepmum and his sister seem to want us here, but his father definitely doesn’t. 

“Yeah. Do you know what _you_ want?”

“I want you,” Baz says, looking down at me. 

And it’s another topic change. But then Baz is kissing me, and it’s been such a long day… I kiss him back, and then we’re tumbling back onto my bed, onto the silky duvet cover and the piles of pillows.

When my head hits the pillows, I’m suddenly tired. Bone-tired, like gravity’s suddenly able to bite into me properly, like I’m being held down on the feathery mattress. 

I look up at Baz. His eyes are darker than usual — blue and gray and green, mixed together, like water on a stormy day.

I’m giggling. “Your eyes, Baz.”

Baz brushes my hair back from my forehead. “What about them?”

They’re like the moat at Watford, I think, like the moat on a windy day in November. “Merwolves, Baz. You have Merwolves in your eyes.” And I start laughing again.

And then I don’t remember anything at all.

**BAZ**

Simon’s head flops back on the pillow, his eyes close, and suddenly I realize that something is wrong here — very wrong. “Snow? Shit. Simon! Simon, wake up!”

He doesn’t respond. I pull my wand and cast **Rise and Shine** — his eyes flutter, but he’s still out. “Shit, Simon. **Wake up, sleepyhead! Wakey wakey! Coffee at its brightest!** ”

He’s still not responding. I feel for his pulse — it’s there, his heart is beating, I can feel it in my teeth.

Simon doesn’t wake up until I pull him up and off the pillow and hit him with another **Rise and shine!**

“Baz?” 

“Shit, Simon,” I say, my heart pounding. “Shit.”

“Baz, what happened?”

“You went out like a light,” I say. “The moment you —” Simon is lying back down. “No, Simon, don’t let your head touch that pillow — there’s something very wrong with it.”

Snow jumps up from the bed like it’s going to bite him. “Is that normal at your houses?”

“No,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around him. “No. It’s not.”

**SIMON**

I let Baz hold me until he stops shaking.

Finally, he lets me go. He draws his wand again and starts casting detection charms, first on the pillows and then all over the room.

“You need to pack,” he tells me, stepping over the crumpled suit on the floor. “You’re not staying here tonight.”

“We’re leaving?”

He bites his lip. “No, I don’t think we can. We need to figure out what’s going on. But you’re not staying in this room tonight.”

I wad up the suit and stuff it in the suitcase. Baz doesn’t notice, which tells me that whatever happened scared him — he’d never let me get away with treating a suit like that at home. 

Once my things are back in the suitcase, I go to sit on the chair, but Baz insists on casting detection charms on it before he’ll let me sit. 

Baz’s expression is grim as he stalks around the room and the attached en suite. “I knew I should have cast **Be our guest!** ,” he says.

I yawn. Baz turns to look at me, and I shake my head. “Just a normal yawn, Baz, I promise. And you don’t live here. **Be our guest!** wouldn’t have worked.”

“It would have worked if I had forced Father to cast it,” Baz says, poking his wand at the curtains. “Or he’d have refused, and I’d have known not to bring you here. Crowley, I’m an idiot.”

I start to say something, but Baz glares at the wardrobe and casts another spell that blows the doors open. Right, then.

I’m starting to nod off in the chair by the time Baz finishes his rounds.

“Simon?”

“Just tired,” I say, biting down on another yawn. “Promise.”

“Okay,” Baz says, looking suspicious. “Grab the suitcase. We’re going to my room. And we’re taking the pillows. This room doesn’t have a fireplace.”

I reach for the pillows, but Baz stops me. “Chomsky, Snow, don’t _touch_ them.” He levitates them with **Up, up, and away!** , floating them in front of him like a balloon.

Baz opens the door silently, and then peers down the hallway in both directions before motioning me to follow him. 

It’s nearly black in the hallway — Baz can probably see just fine, he’s a vampire, but I’m reduced to shuffling behind him as he floats a big ball of potentially-evil pillows down the hallway.

“Stairway here,” Baz whispers, just loudly enough for me to hear. I put my hand on his shoulder and let him lead me up a flight of stairs.

Whoever gave us these rooms wanted us to be as far apart as possible, I think, shivering in the air conditioning. 

After shuffling the full length of another dark hallway, we’re at Baz’s door. Baz sets down the pillows on the hallway carpet. “Stand back, Snow.”

His detection charms don’t reveal anything on the doorway. He re-levitates the pillows and nods for me to go info his room.

Inside, he’s left a low light burning and the curtains drawn. His bed looks enormous and inviting… I sit down before Baz can stop me, but I don’t touch his pillows.

Baz levitates the pillows from my room directly into the fireplace, then stares at them. “First things first, I think.” He starts doing the same round of detection spells that he used on my room.

“Baz?”

He’s distracted. “Yeah?”

“Can I test out these pillows?”

Now I have his attention. “Please don’t.”

“It’s just —“ I shift back on my elbows, keeping away from the head of the bed. “If these are spelled too, you can wake me up. But I can’t wake _you_ up.”

Baz draws in a long breath, thinking about this. “Fine. But be careful.”

Be careful… lying back against a pillow? I’m not sure how, but I lower myself onto it slowly.

Baz is holding is breath, but nothing happens. I shrug and switch to the other pillow. “I think they only did my room.”

Baz’s fist clenches around his wand, but he goes back to his detection charms, roughly pushing aside the curtains and checking the windows. 

I lie back against the pillows, sleepy but not actually wanting to go to sleep… Baz has purpose, stalking around this room, and he looks as deadly and lovely as he ever did on a football pitch. 

Finally Baz finishes his checks, and turns his attention to the pillows in the fireplace. He twists his hand, and the pillows go up in flames.

I sit up. “Baz!”

“They hurt you,” he says, watching the fire lick around the velvet ribbon on a little ornamental pillow. 

I know he’s not talking about the pillows.

“They didn’t, really,” I say. 

He turns to me. “What if there had been a fire? And you hadn’t been able to wake up?”

“I think that’s pretty unlikely.”

“But _what if_ ,” he says. 

I get up and wrap my arms around him. “You were there. And we’ll — we’ll figure the rest of it out in the morning.”

Baz doesn’t say anything, but he lets me lead him back to the bed. Wrapped in each other’s arms, we watch the pillows burning in the fireplace until they go out.


	4. Chapter 4

**SIMON**

I wake up before Baz the next morning.

I watch him, from my pillow. He's still, but his eyes are moving under his eyelids, and I can see his fangs trying to grow. I wonder what he’s dreaming of. I wonder if I should wake him. (Probably not when his fangs are in.)

Finally, I get up and take a shower. I use Baz’s shower things; at home, I just use Penny’s shampoo and conditioner. At the hotels, I’ve been using the guest shampoos and soaps and conditioners.

But this morning, all I have is Baz’s little bottles.

When I step out of the shower, I smell like him. I towel off and start trying to find something to wear, trying to stay quiet so I won’t wake him.

“Crowley, Snow,” he growls from the bed. “You sound like a herd of….” He trails off, blinking at the sunshine. “A herd of something.”

I pull the curtains closed for him. “Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you.”

He runs his hand across his face. “No, we’ll need to — Snow, what are you planning on wearing?”

I hold up the faded jeans and the Watford t-shirt I’ve grabbed from my suitcase, and he winces. “Absolutely not.”

“Fine,” I say. “You dress me.”

He gets up and opens his suitcase. I’m assuming he’s ignoring me until he hands he a pair of dark jeans and a t-shirt. The t-shirt is a deep shade of green.

“It’s the same thing I had,” I say, holding them up. The jeans will be too long.

“It’s not,” Baz says. “You know that.” He wanders into the en suite, and then pokes his head out again. “Don’t go anywhere outside this room without me, Snow. And can you pack your things? I’d like to have the suitcases loaded before we go have it out with my father.”

* * *

We sneak out a side door to load the suitcases into the car. Baz’s jeans are tight and uncomfortable, like they don't fit me right, and he won’t stop looking at me in them. The t-shirt is comfortable, though — it feels like silk, sort of, but who would make a t-shirt out of silk?

Once we’re back inside, Baz leads me to the breakfast room.

The sun is pouring through the windows onto a table covered in a white cloth. There’s a stack of plates on the sideboard, along with covered dishes. 

I glance at Baz, and he nods. “They can’t be planning on poisoning everyone.” He pauses. “At least I hope not.”

Baz takes a mug of coffee, and I take a mug of coffee with cream and sugar and a plate of buttered toast (it’s been kept warm under a warming charm) and cherry and raspberry jam. The warming trays reveal scrambled eggs and bacon and sausages… I start loading another plate.

I’m on my third plate when Baz’s stepmum and sister come in. 

Mordelia heads straight for the jam, but Baz’s stepmum comes over to us. “Basilton! Mr. Snow. I hope you had a pleasant night.”

“Not exactly,” Baz mutters, and takes another sip of coffee.

I shrug, and she takes a deep breath. “I hope you’ve found enough to eat, Mr. Snow?”

I smile, and we make small talk, and everything would be perfectly fine if it weren’t for the fact that I can feel Baz’s seething rage right next to me, wrapped up in a button-down shirt and tight trousers and a cup of black coffee. I think Baz must only drink his coffee black when something’s wrong, when he doesn’t want people seeing how much sugar and cream he puts in and thinking he’s weak for it.

When Baz’s father finally comes in, I’m on my fourth plate (scones and jam and butter).

Baz snaps immediately. “What in the name of Merlin were you thinking, Father?”

Baz’s stepmum grabs his sister — I hear Mordelia protesting as she’s dragged from the room.

But his father’s face remains impassive. He pours himself a cup of coffee from the urn on the sideboard and turns back to Baz. “What do you mean?”

Baz laughs, an ugly laugh. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

His father holds his gaze, but Baz isn’t backing down. “I know you had some hidden agenda,” Baz says. “Mind you, Simon and me, we thought you were _softening_ , we thought maybe you _cared_ about your oldest son, maybe you wanted to make things _right_ , but no, that’s not it, is it? So what in the name of Aleistair Crowley is it?”

“I do care,” Baz’s father says, and he raises a hand when Baz goes to start again. “I do, Basilton.”

“Drugging my boyfriend is a damn strange way to show it.”

“Drugging?” His father raises an eyebrow.

“Look, you know what you did,” Baz says. “I just want to know why. And then Simon and I are leaving.”

“I — “ His father sets down his cup of coffee. “I did not drug Mr. Snow. But — I did have a reason for inviting him here. It’s about the house.”

“The _house_?” Baz asks.

“You asked about the books,” his father says. “The fact is, I wasn’t willing to give your mother’s house up to — “ He looks at me for a moment, and then back at Baz. “I wasn’t willing to give it up. Not for me, but for you. You and Fiona. It’s your home, Basilton.”

Baz stares at his father, like he doesn’t understand.

But I do. “The hole. You — are you trying to get the magic back? Is that why that weird dude asked me all those questions at dinner?”

“That _weird dude_ is Mr. Perseveril Smythe, and he’s an expert at magical resonance,” Baz’s father says.

I’ve never heard of a Smythe, and I’ve been working with Penny’s dad for over a year now — I may not be able to do magic anymore, but I know a lot about it. I know a lot about who's working in the area. And I know a lot about the holes. “What were you expecting him to get out of this?”

“He said he needed information,” Baz’s father says. “He said he needed to talk to Simon Snow. And… well, I knew I’d be able to arrange that.”

Baz looks ill. “And the drugging?”

Baz’s father sighs. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I start biting into a scone without thinking about it, and then feel ill. Because I’ve remembered what else is going on with the holes.

“I think we need to know everything,” I say. “Everything about who Mr. Smythe is and who hired him. Because there’s a chance that he’s involved with the blood in the holes.”

**BAZ**

I’m furiously angry with my father — my vision has narrowed and I can feel my blood pounding in my head. And then Snow says _that_ , about the blood, and suddenly my anger folds in on itself and I’m left with a cold, hard center of fear. “Father?”

Father looks — he looks as blank as ever. Which means nothing. I learned everything I know about poker faces from this man.

“What blood?” he asks.

“You have to answer,” I say. There's a feeling like ice gripping my gut. I start fingering my wand. “You have to tell us. If Mr. Smythe — or worse, if you —“

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Father says. He picks up his coffee cup again. “But I suppose you have… fine."

“It started after I re-joined the Coven. I represent the interests of the Old Families. Several of the other Families who had been driven out of their homes approached me to ask about restoration efforts. They knew that we had lost the Pitch family home.”

“The Coven has been researching the holes,” Snow says, his eyes narrow. 

“They have,” Father says. “But their efforts — excuse me, Mr. Snow, but they have not exactly bourn fruit. It’s hard to believe that there might not be — other ways.”

“Other ways like _killing people_?” I say.

Father turns to me. “Basilton, I can assure you that we had no intention of harming Mr. Snow. None at all. Mr. Smythe just needed additional information for his research.”

Snow speaks before I can.

“So you tricked me,” Snow says, like he’s used to this. (I suppose he is.) “Look, Baz isn’t talking about killing _me_. How much do you know about Smythe’s methods?”

“As far as I know, he’s still in the research phase of the project,” Father says.

Snow and I look at one another. “I can show him the pictures,” Snow says.

I think for a moment, and then nod. Father’s on the Coven, he would have been briefed on this eventually. And if he is responsible for hiring the man who did this, I won’t bloody well protect him.

Father flips through the photographs on Snow's mobile. “What are these?”

“Someone’s been sacrificing people in the center of holes,” I say. “Our leading theory right now is that someone is trying to bring the magic back.”

Father’s face whitens for a moment, and then he hands Snow back his mobile. “Let me get Mr. Smythe.”

Snow puts his hand over mine once Father’s gone. I let him, for a moment, and then get up for another cup of black coffee. I should be starving, after almost no dinner last night, but my gut is churning and I’m so angry I can feel my fangs trying to pop and I can tell that trying to eat would be a mistake just now.

Smythe looks exhausted and pinched when Father marches him into the breakfast room. He's still wearing his pajamas, which are incongruously yellow. “What’s this about?” he asks.

I raise my wand. “First, it’s about a pillow. Was that you?”

Smythe looks over at Father, whose face is still impassive. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, gulping.

“I think you do,” I say. “And I think I can cast a truth spell and force it out of you.”

“Basilton,” Father says. “Allow me. I’m on the Coven; I can’t get in trouble. You still could.”

True. I look at Snow, who shrugs. “Fine,” I say.

Father casts one of the nastier truth spells, and then motions for me to continue. I lean forward. “Did you intend any harm to Simon Snow?”

Smythe shakes his head. “No. I needed information.”

“What sort of information?”

“Information about the holes,” Smythe says.

He’s trying to block Father’s charm — trying to only give us answers to the questions we ask. “Have you harmed anyone in any way during this project?”

“No.”

“Are you aware of anyone or anything being harmed in any way by anyone during this project?”

“No.”

I try to think of another way to rephrase the question — have I left any loopholes? “Do you know anything about blood or vampire ashes being found?”

Smythe’s eyes go wide. “No.”

“Let me ask the questions,” Snow says suddenly.

Father looks over at me, and then nods at Snow. Snow launches into a series of questions I don’t understand — all _morphological_ and _dynamic matrices_ and _flow instability_.

Finally, after Smythe finishes mumbling his way through a response to a question about Magickal entanglement theory, Snow looks up. “It’s okay, Baz. He’s a scam artist.”

I feel a wash of relief. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Snow says. “Either that or he’s stupid enough to believe what he’s saying.”

“So he’s not —“

Simon smiles. “Look, I know I’m not brilliant or anything, but I’ve been working with Professor Bunce for a while now. I have a pretty good grasp on magical morphology and resonance theory, and I can tell when someone doesn’t — and you,” he says, turning to Smythe, “you’ve just been making up words, haven’t you? Or do you actually believe in what you’re saying?”

Smythe tries not to answer, but Father flicks his wand in his direction. “Bit of both,” Smythe mutters.

“Did you spell Snow’s pillow?” I ask.

“Yes,” Smythe says, glaring.

“And did my father ask you to? Did he know anything about it?” I ask, before Father can lift the charm.

“No,” Smythe says. “To both questions.”

“What were you going to do to him?” I ask.

“Test him,” Smythe says. “I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

Snow sighs, and leans back in his chair to face my father. “You could have just told us what you wanted. I would have helped. I want to fix the holes more than anyone — that’s why I’ve been working with Professor Bunce.”

Father doesn’t say anything.

I’m not sure where this leaves us — where any of this leaves us. Snow obviously thinks he’s ruled Father out as a suspect, but we’ve nothing else on the holes — the books I wanted to consult are still in Hampshire, hostage to Father’s belief in returning me to my rightful place.

He probably still wants me to find some nice woman to raise little Pitches with.

And he doesn’t want to know Snow. He never did. 

How very stupid of me to think otherwise.

**SIMON**

Baz insists on driving. We’ve brought his Aunt Fiona’s car — he says it needs to get out every so often, like it’s a horse or something.

We’ve got the top down, so I’ve got my wristwatch on, hiding my wings from the world. It’s not a nice day for driving — gray, overcast. Humid. The air feels like building tension. I wonder if this is how other mages felt when I was about to _go off_ … or perhaps it’s just Baz and his mood. 

I let him bash the clutch, taking his anger out on the roads and the traffic. It’s some time before I realize that we’re not taking the most direct route back to the flat.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Getting metaphysical, Snow?” Baz throws the MG down a gear and accelerates past a lorry. “I want to check something in Hampshire.”

We stop for lunch, cheese toasties and tea. Baz still won’t eat in front of Normals, and he was too angry for breakfast, so I grab extra toasties for him for the car. 

He deigns to eat one, although he won’t let me drive. (His Aunt Fiona would be furious if she saw him eating in this car.)

Baz slows down, a bit, as we get closer to the house. The trees are leafy and green around us. I think about how it looked that December — we pass the bit where the cabby dropped me off and refused to go further. 

It all looks different from a car, different in the summer, a green tunnel instead of an endless track of bare trees poking out of the snow and mud. 

“Baz?”

He looks over at me. “Yeah?”

“Where’s the boundary of the hole?”

“I haven’t been back here,” Baz says. “I don’t actually know. We’ve still got magic now, though.”

I take off my watch and allow my wings and tail to burst out, keeping my wings carefully against my back so they won’t catch the air from the moving car. It feels good… it feels _better_ , like there’s some part of me that’s meant to be like this.

It also feels a little safer, since we’re going into Baz’s childhood home.

Baz doesn’t ask, but I can feel him thinking it. “I just feel better with them out,” I say. “It’s not like there’ll be any Normals to see us, right?”

“Father probably has caretakers,” Baz says. “Don’t worry, I’ll spell them to forget.” Then he realizes what he’s said and snorts. “I mean I’ll lure them out of the hole, _then_ spell them to forget.”

We drive on, through the green woods. I’m looking for where Penny and Agatha let me out on Christmas Eve, and I’m looking for a burnt patch, a bit of woods where everything changed. For both of us.

Baz looks over at me again. “How does that work, anyway? With the wings, and the holes?”

I shrug, feeling the wings pull against the leather of the car seat. “I stay how I am when I enter the hole. If I’ve got a charm or the watch on, it doesn’t stop working. If I’ve got the wings out, they stay, and I can use them, sort of… I’m not very good at flying. I think most of flying from here to London was my magic, really.”

“So like… stasis,” Baz says.

“Exactly like that. Professor Bunce has done experiments… it was one of the first things they checked.” I keep talking, about stasis and objects and charms, while Baz drives us past the place where I told Agatha and Penny that I needed to go back for him. 

There isn’t a day when I haven’t been glad I did that, I think, and reach out for Baz’s hand. 

He lets me hold it until he needs it to shift again. And then we’re pulling into the driveway of the manor.

**BAZ**

Father doesn’t know I’ve come here. And Snow doesn’t know _why_.

I don’t trust Father’s truth spell. Not entirely. And while I don’t remember the boundaries of the hole that formed that night, I do remember its center — not where Simon-the-Humdrum attacked me, but at the heart of the estate.

It’s gray and sweaty out, and Simon insists on putting the top of the car up before we go anywhere. 

The house looks — mostly the same. I don’t know what else I expected. Probably a ruin; that’s how I see it in my dreams, now. But instead, it’s still the same Victorian monstrosity that’s been housing the Pitch family since the 1800s, on the same plot of land where Pitches have lived since before the fairies disappeared.

It’s not the center of the hole, though. “Come on,” I say to Simon.

He follows me down overgrown pathways. Father’s obviously paying someone to keep the grounds up, but they have a shaggy look to them that my stepmother never would have tolerated. 

My breath catches when I see it, because I never imagined it like this.

It’s the ritual ground. It’s the heart of our estate, the place where Pitches from time immemorial (or at least time unremembered) have come to cast great workings, the sort of workings that wouldn’t be safe or prudent indoors.

It’s been here for centuries — much longer than the house. Our houses burned around us and this stayed here, this little patch of grass in the shadowy forest, kept close-cropped by sheep and goats and then by gardeners with lawnmowers.

And now it’s overgrown. More than shaggy — it’s turning into a meadow.

Simon catches my hand. He must see something in my face, because I haven’t told him what this place is.

“We need to look,” I say. “For blood. This is the center of the hole.”

“Right,” Simon says, and he doesn’t ask if I don’t trust my father. “Let’s go.”

**SIMON**

It’s like that day in the Lake District, searching through fields of grass for something I don’t want to find.

I’m pretty sure we’re not going to find anything after the first few minutes, but Baz keeps searching, turning the grasses with a stick he’s found in the forest. 

The air’s feeling heavier and I’m starting to smell the ozone when Baz turns to me. “Can you fly? Just a bit, to see from higher up?”

I shrug, and then unfurl my wings.

It’s difficult flying now — I’m heavy, and my wings are small. I’m extremely poorly designed for flying, really. But I manage to rise above the grass, enough to confirm what I already knew — there is no blood here. There are no ashes. 

I also see a flash of lightning, through the trees.

“Nothing,” I tell Baz, back on the ground. “Really, there’s nothing.”

Baz doesn’t look convinced. “It could be gone already.”

“If you’re looking for blood? Yeah. It could. You can’t be sure.”

Baz groans and pushes back his hair with both hands. “Am I going mad, Snow?”

“I hope not.” I’m listening for the thunder. “What were you hoping to find?”

“Don’t know,” Baz says, picking up his stick again.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“Just a field,” Baz says. “Well. It is now.”


	5. Chapter 5

**BAZ**

I finally give up on looking for blood in the ritual ground when the rain comes, splashing down in great fat drops along our path. Snow’s got his wings up, but they don’t cover us.

We run together along suddenly muddy pathways, back to the main house.

I’ve already got my wand out to take off the protective charms on the door before I remember. “Bugger.”

 Snow tries the handle. “It’s open.”

“Nobody from the area would break in here,” I say, pushing past Snow and into the house. Outside, a flash of lightning is followed almost immediately by a peal of thunder.

Inside, it’s warm and surprisingly dry. I start wondering what sort of stasis charm is being used before I remember. There is no magic here. There will never be magic here again.

“It’s still creepy,” Snow says beside me, keeping his voice low.

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, Snow, it’s not working.”

Snow bumps his shoulder against mine, and then follows me up to the library.

The library looks just the same — I don’t know why I expected otherwise. Maybe all the dreams, where I come back and the house has fallen into great ruins, or burned down, or been reclaimed by the forest.

But instead, it’s exactly the same. The windows look out onto the garden, where the rain is drumming down in thick gray sheets, shot through with the occasional lightning bolt.

Snow follows me to the book cases. They’re all here — all the books, all the Pitch family library, the good and the bad and the potentially evil, Dark and mundane alike.

“I need cartons,” I say.

“I could… go look….” Snow swallows.

“I’ll go with you. Don’t worry.”

We find cartons in the kitchen, along with evidence of hasty packing. Half of the kitchen things are gone. The silver and the china are untouched, though. Snow insists on going back to my bedroom ( _”I have fond memories of that bedroom”_ ). The wardrobe and drawers are empty, but the furniture is untouched. I look through my Watford books and throw a few basic volumes on Magickal theory into one of the cartons.

Back in the library, I pack up three cartons of books — mostly more Magickal theory, the advanced sort, but also a few of my favorite plays and volumes on poetry and economics. It takes ages to go through the shelves. I wish I could use **Fine Tooth Comb.**

After a few minutes looking through the shelves, Snow slumps down on the couch and stares at the ceiling. I suppose he didn’t get much sleep last night — neither of us did.

I keep looking through the shelves until the rain stops.

**SIMON**

Baz lets me drive the rest of the way back to London. With the suitcases in the boot, we barely fit all his books in the back seat of the car — it’s not sized for book transport.

Baz takes a deep breath when we pass the boundary of the hole. “We’re back out of it, Snow.”

The road is still narrow, and I pull over carefully before putting my watch back on. My wings collapse into my shoulders. They’re still a bit sore — my back and shoulders too. I don’t normally fly. Perhaps I should more often. (But where?)

I expect Baz to have me take his books to his Aunt Fiona’s flat, but he tells me to go back to our place. “I’ll return the MG tomorrow. I need to clean it first or she’ll know.”

When we get the books and the suitcases upstairs, Baz has me bring everything to our room. “It’s not that I don’t trust Bunce,” he says. “But sometimes she brings in Normals to visit.”

I shrug. “I’m a Normal.”

Baz glares at me. “You’re not, and you know it.” (Baz tells me I’m not a Normal the way I tell him he’s not a vampire. We’re both wrong, but it’s still nice to hear.)

Baz goes back to his bookcase-construction charm. I lay back on our bed and watch him work.

“Only someone who steals as many books as you would need to know bookcase construction charms.”

“I didn’t _steal_ these,” Baz says. He doesn’t turn around.

“You stole a lot of books at Watford,” I say. “Tons of books. You and Penny. And you stole books from the Queen.”

Baz still isn’t looking at me. He’s loading his books from the cartons and onto the shelves.

“Remember? Our first date. You took me to steal books, you watched me eat a curry, and then we went to a vampire bar.”

He turns around at that. “That wasn’t our first date, Snow.”

I grin. “You still kissed me at the end of the night, though.”

He’s staring at me now. “ _You_ kissed _me_.”

“Yeah, well, maybe the first time.”

I meet his eyes, and he huffs with laughter and then turns back to his shelves.

We go through all our usual nighttime routines — tea and blood (Baz) and washing. We’re both pretending that everything is normal. Perfectly normal.

I’m nearly asleep when I feel the bed move. Hear Baz’s breathing catch.

“Baz?”

He doesn’t say anything, but I feel him shake his head.

I reach over to stroke his hair. His cheek is wet; he’s crying.

“It’s not because of my father,” he says. “Or the house.”

I put my face on his chest and wrap my arm around his waist. “I know.”

Baz’s chest is cool against my cheek. It’s moving, with his breath. “I hate it when people use you,” he says.

“It’s okay,” I say, and I push up so I’m looking down at him. (I can barely see him, in the darkness, but I know he can see me.) “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

Baz makes a sound that’s half-laugh and half-sob. “That makes it worse, Simon.”

I lean down to kiss him. His lips are cold, too.

**BAZ**

Snow and I spend the next few days staring at Bunce’s whiteboard. Snow stares so hard I expect the whiteboard to spontaneously combust.

We’ve left the flat, of course — for curry, and for groceries, and for blood. Snow found the bottles from Mickey’s and we went back and watched from the shop across the street for three hours, but we didn’t see Nicodemus, and nobody approached me for a vampire yoga course, so we bought a few more bottles of Mickey-blood (delicious) and went home.

The Coven isn’t telling us anything — they must have told Father by now, too, but we haven’t heard from him either.

While Snow stares at the whiteboard and talks to Bunce (still in America), I read. First the introductory books from Watford — I know them already, but I need to refresh my memory. And then the books from our library.

I’ve never minded much about the theory of magic — I knew it, of course, I was tops in our year. I knew _all the things_ , as Bunce is so fond of saying. But I never cared about it like I cared about the practical side. (I’m excellent at magic. Maybe I didn’t need to know the theory.)

But Snow’s clearly ahead of me — I didn’t understand one word in ten that he said to that Smythe troll.

I refuse to let Snow get this far ahead of me. It’s unacceptable.

So while Snow and Bunce stare at the whiteboard from opposite sides of the Atlantic, and talk about how killing vampires could possibly fill in a hole, I plow through thick volumes on Magickal Theory and dynamic control of the underlying Magickal matrix.

It’s frustrating stuff. Half the words change between volumes — depending on which mage wrote them — and they never have a bloody glossary, or if they do define things, you find that Chasilton’s _Magickal matrix_ is almost the same thing as Nguyen’s _underlying Magickal field_ , but not _quite_ , because of course Chasilton is including the passive field whereas Nguyen ignores it. Of course. Just to make things easier.

You’d think people working in a field where the shading of nuance on a single world can make the difference between a lit candle and an explosion would be able to agree on some bloody terms.

I’m deep into Rowland’s _Underpinnings of Magickal Theory_. (Another basic text. I’m hoping it will throw the more advanced things into focus.)

Snow’s practicing his sword form, in the center of the living room. He’s tipped the coffee table up against the wall to give himself enough room.

I keep my eyes studiously down on the book and allow myself to admire Snow as he steps through the form. He’s taken his shirt off. It’s warm today, and he’s got sweat glistening on his tawny skin.

The book falls into my lap and I give up and just watch him. He’s graceful with a sword — not when walking, or talking, or when he’s on a football pitch. But even with a practice sword, Simon is constructed of purpose and certainty, stepping through the stages, his muscles bunching and flowing.

Bunce found him his new sword. When he lost his magic, he lost the ability to call the Sword of Mages, and the Coven would have expected it back anyway.

He can’t carry it, though — people would have questions, seeing a man with a sword in Central London.

I should have added the sword to the charms on his watch.

Snow is facing the opposite wall, his practice sword raised. (Bunce doesn’t let him use the real sword in the flat, not since the time he destroyed her cheese tray just before her Cheese Night party. Bunce isn’t very good at party themes and the cheese was terrible anyway.)

“Stop staring,” Snow says.

I swallow. “Make me.”

He lowers the practice sword and turns to look at me. “Penny’s calling in a few minutes.” He leaves the rest unsaid, but I can fill in well enough — better not to start something we can’t finish.

“This is why I hated this,” I say. “Back at Watford.”

Snow looks confused. “Penny?”

“Your sword form,” I say, picking my book back up. “I couldn’t help looking at you, but there was nothing I could do about it.”

Snow’s eyes go dark, but he steps back into another series of tight, graceful motions, picking up speed as he goes.

He’s breathing heavily and glistening with sweat when the laptop announces Bunce’s arrival.

Snow sets the coffee table back down and sets the laptop on it to answer. “Penny?”

Bunce peers out of the screen at us. “Simon? I can’t see you.”

Snow sits down next to me on the couch and angles the screen. “Here.”

“Oh, hey, Baz,” Bunce says, waving. “Simon, your hair is damp. Are you getting the couch all sweaty?”

Snow looks over at me. “Just practicing my form.”

Bunce scowls. “That had better not be code for something.”

“My _sword_ form, Penny.” He pulls his hands through his hair — it is all sweaty. “Fine, I’ll take a shower. Talk to Baz.”

I set down my book and turn the computer to face me as Simon gets up. “Bunce.”

“Hey, Baz. Has my father given you any updates?”

“Nobody’s telling us a damn thing,” I say. “We’re only the ones who found the bloody problem.”

“Yeah…” Bunce says. “Yeah, I know.”

There’s something she’s not saying. “What?”

“I just wish it weren’t Simon,” she admits, peering out of the screen in the direction of the bathroom. “When he lost his magic — I wasn’t happy, I’d never be happy about that. But I thought at least he’d be _safe_.”

I set the Rowland down on the coffee table next to the laptop. “Well, he’s Simon Snow,” I say. “I don’t think he’s used to being safe.”

Bunce and I stare at one another for a moment, and then I cough. “How does Micah feel about his girlfriend spending all this time on Skype?”

Bunce laughs and then angles the camera to face behind her. Micah’s there, his face partially blocked by a Wheaties box as he eats from an enormous bowl of cereal. “Hey, Baz,” he says indistinctly.

I nod. “Hello.”

Bunce angles the camera back to herself. “So what have you heard from Nicodemus?”

I growl in frustration. (Crowley, what a vampire cliche.) “Nothing,” I say. “I’m starting to wonder if he’s scarpered off or something.”

Snow comes up behind me, smelling of my shower products. With Bunce gone, he’s run out of her bath things to steal. He could just buy his own, but I’m not entirely sure Snow knows what shops are. Bunce does all the shopping when she’s here. With her in America, I’ve been the one keeping Snow alive and fed and supplied with loo roll.

“Hey, Penny,” Simon says, bending down in front of the laptop camera.

“You may now sit on my couch,” Bunce says grandly.

Snow smiles and drops down beside me. “So did your father have any thoughts on the last theory?”

I get up and pull Bunce’s board to the side of the couch, where they can both see it, and then wander over to the kitchen while they talk. I grab scones and butter for Snow, heating the scones with a **Some like it hot!** — Snow always likes his scones hot, even on the hottest day of the summer. I grab myself a tumbler of blood and head back for the couch.

“I could kiss you,” Snow says, accepting the scones.

I sit down out of camera range with my tumbler of blood. “Please don’t. You’ll embarrass Bunce.”

I sip at my chilled Mickey blood while they talk about the holes. Bunce is convinced that this is about filling them in, but Simon’s not sure.

“And why these holes?” Simon asks, for the fifteenth time.

I get up to rinse my tumbler before the blood sets. “Why not?”

Snow looks over at me. “No, seriously, Baz. Why these holes?”

“Maybe you’re going at it from the wrong direction,” I say, dropping back to the couch and picking up Rowland. “Maybe you should be asking what happens when someone dies in a hole.”

Snow looks down at my book. “Is that why you’ve been reading all that stuff?”

“Maybe,” I say. I’m not about to admit that I’m trying to catch up with Simon Snow in front of an audience.

They argue over it for a while — Bunce agrees to read eight more books, and Snow agrees to keep looking for Nicodemus. The board hasn’t been updated.

When Bunce rings off, Snow turns to look at me. “Why these holes, Baz?”

I put down the Rowland. Again. “What?”

“I know when you’re changing the topic.”

“I thought I made a useful point,” I say. “You should want to know what happens when someone dies in a hole.”

“It was a good suggestion. Penny’s looking into that. But I still know when you’re changing the topic. Why?”

I look down at Snow’s empty scone plate and swallow. “Because of the center of the hole in Hampshire.”

Snow looks confused. “The field? What about it?”

“It wasn’t just a field.”

In my mind, I’m back there — the shaggy grass, the humidity in the air, and the storm pressing in. The ritual grounds.

I wasn’t even allowed there until after my fourth year at Watford. It hadn’t been used for years at that point — Fiona always did keep her tricky magic for her London flat, and Father considered himself a custodian of the Pitch estate, not the master.

I expect Snow to push me, but he sits silently next to me.

“It was the Pitch’s ritual ground,” I say, finally. “We’re fire magicians — you can’t do large workings in your house. Or you can, but you burn the house down… they used to do that a lot. That’s why the house is so new.”

“Hardly new,” Snow says.

“Victorian. Same thing.”

Snow looks intent, like he expected something like this. “So it’s not coincidence, that the hole opened there.”

“Or maybe it is,” I say. “Why did the hole open there, when the Humdrum was right nearby? No holes ever opened at Watford, and he attacked there more than anywhere else.”

“Yeah,” Snow says. “What else can you tell me about the ritual grounds?”

I think back. “I think my mother did workings there,” I say. “I never did.”

“Your aunt?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s a safety measure — doing a working out there. Fiona’s never cared much about that.”

“So it hadn’t been used for a while,” Snow says.

I feel weirdly protective of the grounds. “Father kept it up,” I say. “He had the gardeners mow and salt every week, just like you’re supposed to.”

Snow must be able to tell that this upsets me, because he puts a warm hand on my arm.

******SIMON** ** **

I make Baz tell me everything about the ritual grounds. How long it had been used, what it was used for… Merlin, I didn’t want to _know_ some of these things about his family.

But it’s the first useful clue we’ve had about _why_ the holes opened where they did.

This always bothered me. I’ve never been to the Isle of Skye, and there’s no reason why the Humdrum would pick that area — why a hole there? Why not at Watford? Was I protecting Watford, somehow? Did I have any control over it, like I did when I _went off_?

“It’s just a perfectly ordinary ritual ground,” Baz insists, again, like having a field where the gardeners have to salt the boundaries every week to keep potentially evil things in is just a normal part of everyday life. “Look, what about the other holes?”

I chew on my lip for a moment. “I don’t know. I think we need to go to the Bunce’s.”

“Not what I meant,” Baz said. “You said that field up in the Lake District was filled with sheep. Are sheep doing major workings now?”

“No,” I say, staring at the board. Then I get up, and start writing. CENTERS OF HOLES: POTENTIAL RITUAL CONNECTION?

Baz sighs. “Fine, tell Bunce. But I can’t see why this _helps_.”

“Are you kidding?” I push my hands through my hair, which is still a bit wet from the shower. “If we can figure out why the holes opened up in the first place, we can work on closing them in.”

“You’re going to need to explain that,” Baz says slowly.

I get up from the couch. “Let me put on trousers first. We need to go to the Bunce’s.”

Outside, it’s early evening, but it’s still hot out.

When it’s hot, Baz is nearly as warm as me — you’d think he’d be a nice refreshing cool vampire boyfriend to snuggle up to on hot days. But no. He’s never sweaty but he’s not a refreshing cool glass of water, either.

We stop for a curry, but Baz doesn’t cast **Under the bell jar** , so we don’t talk about anything Magickal. We get the back booth, where Baz can face away from everyone else, so he eats, a little. More than he usually does in public anyway.

When we get to the Bunce’s, Penny’s mum waves us upstairs without looking up from her Skype call.

It’s hot and stuffy in Professor Bunce’s office — it’s at the top of the house, and they don’t have air con, so it’s like stepping into an oven.

“Make it quick,” Baz says, dropping down into a chair.

“It’s more miserable for me than it is for you,” I say, heading over to the first map. “You’re not warm-blooded.”

“I’m wounded,” Baz says. But he’s not really paying attention. He’s worrying over something — I can tell.

Professor Bunce keeps his records of the holes on the maps on the wall, which are large enough that they don’t show many details. But he also has Ordnance Survey maps — old maps going back years and years, over a century, that show every detail in the area —each field and copse of trees, along with any monuments or buildings or local points of interest.

There’s no reason to think that a magician used a car park in Penrith as a ritual ground. But maybe something was there before it was a car park.

I find the file with the Survey maps for each of the holes, and start cross-referencing the holes where we found blood or ashes. There’s no reason to start with those holes, really, but I remember Professor Bunce’s numbers for them.

The first two holes just show as fields on the older maps, but when I check the hole in Penrith, I see it — a small tiny building, noted as a ruin, on the oldest of the maps. When I compare the maps, it’s just at the center of the hole.

I track down several more holes to check. Baz’s house isn’t even on the older maps. They probably had charms to keep the mapping people out.

But two holes out of four is nothing. I don’t even know what that tiny building was used for. This is a longer project. This is not helpful.

******BAZ** ** **

Snow rocks back on his heels and groans.

“No luck?”

He looks over at me. “Maybe. Not sure yet.”

I’ve slid down in the chair, so I’m looking at him over my chest. “If you told me what you were doing, I could help.”

“I’m trying to find out if any of the other holes had centers used for ritual grounds,” Snow says. “But it’s hard to tell. Yours isn’t on the maps, so why would anyone else’s be?”

“True.”

It’s stifling hot up here, and Simon’s hair is damp with sweat again, which he doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s staring at the maps on the wall like he can solve the problem of the holes in a single night… “Snow?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you trying to close the holes?”

He looks over at the door, to make sure it’s shut, and then back at me. “Yes. Why?”

I’m not sure how to respond. “Don’t you think that’s a bit — optimistic?”

He slides down to sit cross-legged on the wooden floor. He’s taken his watch off, so his wings are out, lightly unfurled to catch what little air there is in here. “Maybe. My therapist says I’m allowed to make big plans now, though.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Does your therapist know you’ve decided to fill in the holes?”

“I haven’t told her _that_ ,” Snow says. “She’d tell me it’s guilt talking.”

“Isn’t it?”

Snow looks away from me, at the maps on the wall. “Maybe? I don’t think so? I — I just love magic.”

“I know,” I say. I still ache for the fact that he lost his.

“You don’t,” Simon says, but there’s no bite to the words. “I never loved _doing_ magic. I loved being around it. I still do.” He starts folding the maps he’s taken out. “So if I can help fix what I fucked up — isn’t it worth trying?”

* * *

It takes another three days for Nicodemus to get back in touch.

When he does, it’s a cryptic text, sent to my phone: _Have yoga course info. Meet at usual place._

“Where’s the usual place?” Snow asks.

“No bloody clue,” I say. “Notice that there’s no time, either.”

“So do we — what, we respond?”

“Let’s check my Aunt Fiona’s,” I say.

Outside, the rain’s pissing down, but it’s still hot. It feels like the rain’s turning to steam when it hits the pavements.

Nicodemus is waiting on the street outside Fiona’s flat, standing under a tattered umbrella. He nods when he sees us.

“Starbucks?” I ask. I have no intention of getting any wetter.

He nods, and follows us down the street.

“It wasn’t a yoga course,” Nicodemus tells us, once we’ve made it into the Starbucks and gotten drinks (all of us) and second breakfast (Snow) and I’ve cast **Under the bell jar** on our table to keep the Normals from overhearing.

“Christy — she was Turned recently. Her partner wasn’t taking it well. And it wasn’t a yoga course.”

Snow nods. “What was it?”

“You have to understand,” Nicodemus says. “Most Normals don’t really think we’re sparkly and special.” His lip curls back over the holes where his missing eyeteeth used to be. “Christy’s partner — Pam — she’s a nice lady, for a Normal, but she was having trouble adjusting. So when Christy got wind of someone who claimed they could reverse her vampirism….”

“That’s not possible,” I say, leaning forward on my chair. “Is it?”

“ _I_ couldn’t do it,” Snow says.

“Yeah. Because you’re the first word on what’s possible and not.”

Nicodemus looks between us, waiting for us to shut up. I shrug and take a sip of my raspberry chai. “So?”

“So Christy didn’t tell Pam where she was going,” Nicodemus says. “But after she disappeared, Pam got access to her accounts… her email. She figured out what Christy was doing. She feels like she was responsible for what happened. It took a bit of work to get her to tell us the truth.”

Snow leans forward. “What sort of work, exactly?”

Nicodemus sighs. “Nothing like that.”

Snow’s eyes narrow. “What sort of work?”

“One of us posed as a grief counselor. If you must know.”

“A vampire grief counselor?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

“We provide services to the vampire community,” Nicodemus snaps. “Laugh all you like, pup, but we’re the only support we have.”

He glares at me. I stare back.

“So?” Snow’s talking through a mouthful of brownie. “What happened?” 

“We got Pam to give us Christy’s email,” Nicodemus says. “Enough of it that we know something about how they approached her.”

Nicodemus stares at me, and I realize that I’m worrying at my straw with my eyeteeth.

I set my drink down. “Why give this to us? Why aren’t you tracking this person down yourselves?”

“We’re not mages,” Nicodemus says. “You’ve got — options. Options we don’t have.”

 _Not in a hole_ , I think, but I nod. “Fine. What can you give us?”

* * *

“No,” Snow says, as soon as we leave the Starbucks. “No, Baz. We are not using you as bait.” 

I toss my chai cup into a trash can and look around for Normals before I cast an umbrella charm. It’s still raining, hot and muggy and disgusting.

“You didn’t give me a veto power over your decision to go chasing down bloody holes. And I mean that bloody literally.”

“Not the same thing.” Snow huffs. “I didn’t know I’d be finding blood.”

“Well, we don’t know someone will try to kill me, do we?” _We’re just hoping they will_ , I think, but do not say. _Completely different._

Snow’s forgotten an umbrella, as always, and his ancient Watford T-shirt is plastered to his shoulders. I’d cast an umbrella charm for him, but he’s too focused on arguing with me.

“We can go to the Coven,” he says.

“No. This approach only works with a vampire for bait. The Coven doesn’t know I’m a vampire. Not an option.”

“Your father knows you’re a vampire.” Snow’s shoulders are tight. “We can go to him. I’m sure he can… finesse.”

I snort. “Not bloody likely.”

Snow reaches out for my hand. “He’s still your father.”

I let him hold my hand, but he’s not changing my mind. “No. He could have hurt you.”

“ _This_ could hurt you, Baz.”

“It could hurt you too.” His hand is damp from the rain. I grip it tighter.

“Why do you think Nicodemus is giving this to us?” Simon asks. “He’s not stupid, Baz. He doesn’t want to risk his people.”

“Look,” I say, turning in the rain. “Let’s just figure out a plan. And then if we decide it’s stupid, we can go to the Coven.”

“I don’t like this,” Snow says. The rain’s making his hair fall into damp curls.

“Your dislike is noted.”

We need a plan, I think.

We need to tell Bunce _everything_.


	6. Chapter 6

**BAZ**

As I’d hoped, Bunce is much more willing to risk my life than Snow is. 

“You need to send me everything,” she says from the Skype window, once we’ve gotten her fully up to date on Nicodemus’s information, on the fact that Christy thought she was going to someone who could cure her of vampirism. 

Snow’s hunched down into the couch. He didn’t put on a dry shirt, so he’s still damp from the rain.

Nicodemus sent us all the emails once we left. Based on what I’ve read, it looks like someone found Christy, someone who already knew she was a vampire, or strongly suspected it. How? Unknown. 

Which is a problem, because it means we have to craft an approach that doesn’t _look_ like we’re setting a trap.

Again, a problem. Hence, Bunce.

“I don’t like this,” Snow says. Not for the first time. “I don’t want you to put yourself at risk, Baz.”

Bunce peers out of the laptop screen. “Are you kidding, Simon? Do you know how often you’ve put yourself at risk?”

“Yeah,” Snow mutters, “but I didn’t have to watch it.”

“I did,” Bunce says, shaking her head. “Look, this is the best option we have for figuring this out. We may not even have to use Baz as bait in the real world.”

Bunce and Snow start bickering. I stop paying attention — Bunce is going to win, because I’m not willing to let more people die for… whatever this is.

And also — because I’m still not convinced my father doesn’t have something to do with this. Finding out who did this — who _is doing_ this — is the only way to prove that he’s got nothing to do with it. (Or that he _has_ got something to do with it. After how he treated Simon — )

I pick up my mobile and forward the emails to Bunce. Then I start reading through the emails again.

The first email’s unclear — it’s written in such vague terms that there’s no way to tell _what_ it’s talking about. It looks like a scam email. Like someone’s going to promise you the riches of a Nigerian prince. I think whoever is doing this is older, because someone our age wouldn’t write an email this terrible. (Or perhaps the terrible email is a strategy. Perhaps they only want to catch people credulous enough to fall for vague promises of their heart’s desire.)

The later emails from the target are short. Christy’s responses are wordy and hopeful, but the person behind the emails doesn’t provide any details. _Come alone._

They’re also so badly written I have trouble believing that it’s a Mage who wrote them. Mages have been trained to weigh the meaning of every individual word. Most Mages write like lawyers. (Except for Snow, but I probably can leave off suspecting him of this.)

I break into Snow and Bunce’s argument. “Bunce? I sent you the emails. Can you take a look through and see what you think? I don’t want to prejudice you.”

Bunce looks over to the side of her screen and starts reading.

“I still don’t like this,” Snow says again.

“We know,” I snap, looking back down at the emails.

Snow glowers at us for a bit, and then realizes that we’re not going to start arguing with him. He pulls out his mobile and starts reading.

“I think Nicodemus gave us these because he couldn’t bloody figure it out,” he says after a bit.

“Did you try emailing the email address?” Bunce asks, not looking away from the emails.

“It bounced,” Snow says.

“You did?” I ask, looking over at Snow. “That could have tipped them off — or given them your email. Why would you do that?”

“It _didn’t_ ,” Snow says. “It bounced.”

“But you didn’t _know_ that it would bounce.”

Bunce looks up at us through the laptop screen. “Okay. This is spam.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I thought.”

“How old was this Christy?” Bunce asks. “Because I can’t imagine someone our age falling for this. Was she reading everything in her spam folder?”

“And it’s not well-written,” I say. “So if it’s a Mage doing this, they have someone else reeling in vampires for them.”

Bunce leans back in her chair and stares up at what I can only assume is Micah’s ceiling. “How many people did Nicodemus say had disappeared?”

“Not people, vampires,” I say. (Snow frowns at me.) “At least four, that we know of. Nobody since Christy, but that’s because they know someone is hunting them now. And we have the blood in the holes, which is probably related, but we don’t know how.”

“So whoever’s doing this, they’re not just emailing a few people,” Bunce says. She’s not asking me to write any of this on the board. “If their approach is this bad… they must be throwing a wide net and hoping to catch enough to keep going with whatever it is they’re doing.”

“So — they’re getting email addresses from somewhere,” Snow says. “Or someone.”

“Except Nicodemus must have thought of that,” I say. 

I knew Nicodemus wouldn’t be giving us a lead unless he’d dead-ended on it. No wonder he took so long to get us the information.

Snow looks over at me. “So where do vampires hang out? Apart from the bar. I think Nicodemus would have figured that one out.”

“I’m not the bloody vampire oracle,” I say, feeling annoyed, like I always do when Snow assumes I know anything at all about vampires. “I didn’t even know about —“

_Mickey’s_. I didn’t even know about Mickey’s, where apparently every vampire in the know goes for their blood fix.

Mickey’s, where there’s a battered notebook by the till so you can leave your email to subscribe to their Meat of the Month Mailing List.

My mouth is dry. “I think I know,” I say. 

Aleister Crowley, I hope it’s not Mickey we’re hunting for. His blood is delicious.

**SIMON**

Penny and Baz are totally convinced that Mickey is the answer. 

I’m not. I’m also not resigned to using Baz as bait, but they’re moving forward and if they’re wrong about Mickey, their plan won’t work, will it? So I sit on the couch and eat samosas and curry while Penny and Baz plot signing up for a butcher’s email list like it’s the Normandy Invasion. 

Penny being in Chicago has really shifted our schedules… we’re working into the night in the flat, but it’s still light out where she is.

“What does Micah think of you working with us on this?” I ask around a mouthful of curry.

Penny shrugs. “I think he knows you two would get yourselves killed without me.”

“We _wouldn’t_ ,” I say, but the truth is, I’m worried Baz will get himself killed even with Penny planning things for us. 

Baz only saw the blood in pictures. He didn’t see it in person.

“I think we need two people to sign up,” Penny says. “I want to see how wide a net they’re casting. If they’re only approaching vampires, or if they’re approaching everyone who signs up.”

Baz nods. “Simon can be our control.”

“They’ve already seen me,” I point out. “With you.”

Baz waves his hand. “So we’ll disguise you. Bunce, can you set up fake emails for us?”

“Already done,” Penny says. 

I stuff another samosa into my mouth.

**BAZ**

Operation: Butcher’s Email is a go. Or it would be, if Snow didn’t have a ridiculous idea of what constitutes _going undercover_. 

“You are not wearing those ridiculous fake glasses to infiltrate a butcher’s shop,” I say, glaring. Where did he even _get_ round black plastic glasses? He won’t be able to see out of them. “We are _mages_ , Snow.”

He pushes out his lower lip. “You are.”

Bunce sighs from the laptop. “Look, Simon, were you wearing trackie bottoms the last time you went in?”

“He was,” I say. “And a t-shirt.”

“So wear a suit. And maybe change your hair color or something.”

Snow looks excited.

“You don’t get to wear a _wig_ ,” I say. “We’re not _Normals_.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Simon asks.

I raise my wand and tap it on his hair. “ _ **Black as a raven’s wing.**_ ” 

Snow’s hair trembles on his head for a moment, and then a thick inky black color spreads out from the roots.

Snow shakes himself, then raises his hands slowly to his head, runs them through his hair. “Baz. What did you do?”

“It’s reversible,” I say. “Well. It should be.”

He leans down to the laptop to inspect himself with the camera. 

Penny starts laughing. “Well, that doesn’t look like you.”

I leave to find a suit. Snow looks fine. He doesn’t look like _Snow_ , but then, that’s the point. 

Penny has provided us with a timetable for the visits to the butcher’s shop, which are scheduled for the following morning. We’re to approach the shop from opposite directions. Snow will go first, followed by me twenty minutes later.

Once Snow leaves the shop, he will go across the street to watch for me, because apparently vampire-kidnappers could decide to take me from the street in broad daylight if he doesn’t keep watch. 

We stop by Aunt Fiona’s flat on the way over. This was my idea. We can’t know that Nicodemus isn’t having us followed. I water the plants and check the mail and Snow kneels on the floor and watches out the windows, his eyes and his black hair just over the edge of the sill. 

“Anyone out there?”

“Not that I can see,” Snow says.

We wait another half-hour, per Penny’s timetable, before we take the back exit from the flats and head for the butcher’s shop.

Snow’s the first to head in, so I peel off at a Starbucks on the way and buy a chai to kill the time. I wait by the window, counting off twenty minutes on my mobile clock.

I realize I’m chewing on my straw… this is ridiculous. Simon Snow can safely buy a bit of roast and put down his email for a mailing list by himself. He’ll be fine.

I don’t look at the shop across the street on my way in to Mickey’s. I don’t need to. I can feel Snow’s eyes on me. 

Inside Mickey’s shop, it’s just the same — the wide counter, and Mickey behind it, in his bloodstained apron. 

I hand over my jars. “Same, please.” 

He inspects the jars for flaws, and then nods and heads to the cooler. I move to the till, trying to look casual as I write down Bunce’s throwaway email address in the grubby notebook. 

Snow’s handwriting is the entry above me. He’s got terrible handwriting, but he’s clearly tried here, because I can make out the email address. 

Mickey packs the new bottles of blood into a carrier bag, with ice, and hands it over. I pay, and then walk out into the sunlight.

Snow’s already coming out of the shop across the street. “Well?”

I glare at him and keep walking. “We weren’t supposed to be seen together, Snow.”

He stands there for a moment on the pavement, and then starts walking, several paces behind me, like he doesn’t know me. I pick up the pace until we clear three blocks, until I finally feel like we’re not being watched.

Snow catches up to me. “So?”

“So I wasn’t kidnapped buying blood in a butcher’s shop, Snow,” I say, looking down at his carrier bag. (Penny had him buy a roast instead of blood, so we’ve got a proper control. None of us really cook, so the roast will probably sit in the refrigerator until it goes off and we throw it away.)

“Good,” Snow says.

We walk a bit further, holding our carrier bags. 

“I hope this doesn’t work,” Snow says, fiercely. “If this doesn’t work, will you go to the Coven?”

“Absolutely,” I say.

I’m lying. But I think this is going to work.

* * *

Back at the flat, I put the roast and the blood into the fridge. Simon opens the laptop — Bunce looks worried. “You’re ten minutes behind time!”

“We clearly survived,” I say. “Did anyone email?”

“Not yet,” Bunce says.

Simon runs his hands through his hair, and then stops. “Baz, can you fix my hair?”

“Fix what? Black hair is lovely.” 

“On vampires, maybe.”

I raise my wand, concentrating on Snow’s normal hair color, the bronze curls, the way it glints in the sunlight. Thinking of how much I love Snow’s hair. “ _ **Gentlemen prefer blonds.**_ ”

Snow pulls out his mobile to inspect. “Fine,” he says, after examining his hair from all possible angles. “Fine.”

“You’re lucky I spent so many years staring at you,” I say, putting my wand away.

* * *

Two days after Operation: Butcher’s Email.

“Mickey’s signed you up for his newsletter,” Bunce says. “Both of you. Apparently chops are on sale.”

“Great,” Simon says, from the floor. He’s decided that we’re not going to hear anything, and he’s working on alternative plans, most of which seem to involve convincing Bunce and I to go to the Coven.

* * *

Three days after Operation: Butcher’s Email. Bunce and Simon have filled a new whiteboard with alternative vampire hangouts.

Simon’s on the floor again, with his feet up on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “The only vampire I know hangs out in libraries.”

“Nightclubs,” Bunce says. “They must need to hunt at night.”

“They won’t be hunting,” I point out. “Not the ones who are involved with Nicodemus’s group. And it sounds like the ones who aren’t are either run out of town, or… or gone.”

Bunce’s lips compress into a tight line. “So where do you suggest we look?”

I don’t have any suggestions.

* * *

It’s five days after Operation: Butcher’s Email when Penny opens our spam folders and sees them: The emails. We’ve both got one, with the same text but sent from different email addresses.

It’s not quite the same as the one Christy got, but it’s definitely the same writer. The same vague, uncertain approach — _holistic healing_ and _allowing you to reopen to life as you once were_. It’s a crap email and it would only convince someone who was desperate.

Which, of course, is why it worked on Christy. But I try not to let myself think too much about that.

“We need a new plan,” Bunce says, like she’s organizing a garden party for the Queen. “A new plan!”

Snow takes a sip of tea to wash down his buttered toast. “Don’t we just have Baz write back and say _Yes, I am a vampire, please heal me_?”

“You have no subtlety,” Bunce says. 

Neither does Bunce. But I don’t say so.

In the end, I’m the one to draft my reply — hesitant, like I’m not sure I can believe this is possible, maybe like I’m not sure what they’re talking about, or like I don’t want to hope that it could be true. (It’s not hard. I’ve thought about being healed from my vampirism before.)

The response comes right away, and it’s much clearer than the initial email. I respond again, each time allowing my email-self to be a little bit more vulnerable, to hope a bit more… I’m good with words. I think whoever is on the other end is buying it.

Bunce watching it all, of course. “You’re good at this, Baz. Did you ever think of catfishing Simon?”

“I’m above that,” I say, and take a sip of blood from my tumbler.

I _did_ think of it. In Sixth Year, when Snow was still madly in love with Agatha (or was he?). But I couldn’t think of any way it could end well — that was when I didn’t believe happy endings were possible. 

It’s another three days of emails before we’ve got a time, and a place. And then Bunce starts working on the plan in earnest. 

**SIMON**

Baz stares down at the earbud, and then turns to the laptop. “I can think of eight separate charms that would allow for instant communication, Bunce. And not one of them involves me sticking a bit of Normal plastic in my _ear_.”

“Tough shit,” Penny says. (She’s gone all American on us.) “You know as well as I do that you’ll be going into a hole.”

“We don’t know that,” Baz gripes, but he puts the earbud into his ear and then turns to glare at Penny. “Now what?”

“Now I run the communications test,” Penny says. She hits a couple buttons, and Baz winces. “Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “Simon, do you have yours in?”

“Right,” I say, and put mine in. 

Penny runs us through tests on the comms, and then starts clicking away at Baz’s GPS tracker. “This won’t work if they scan you,” she says, looking nervous even in the little window on the laptop screen. “But I don’t want to rely on your phone. If they know anything about Normal electronics, they’ll have you pull the battery.”

My chest feels funny, like I’m about to _go off_ , only of course that’s not it. “I don’t like this,” I say, again.

Baz and Penny both ignore me.

“Seriously. We don’t even know if these people are Normals or mages. Doesn’t that seem like a problem?”

“We’re covering both possibilities,” Penny says, from her laptop screen. (Easy for her to say. She’s not even _here_.)

I keep arguing, while Baz ignores me and Penny sets up our comm and runs checks on the cameras. 

This all feels like a terrible mistake.

**BAZ**

It’s a lovely day and I’m waiting in a car park.

Bunce has run through this plan. There are eight nearby holes; she’s added a small wireless camera at all of them, so she can see us (she hopes). She’s given Snow and I earbuds, and given me a GPS tracker, like I’m a collie dog with a habit of running off. She’s done everything the Normal way, and then she’s had me charm myself with so many tracking and protection charms that I have a hard time believing a mage wouldn’t notice them on sight.

And of course, Snow’s still worried.

But I’m still doing this. Vampires and people need to stop disappearing. And this could still be my father’s doing.

I need to _know_. 

It’s ten minutes past time when a man pulls up in a battered white minivan without windows. He rolls down the driver’s side window without getting out. He’s wearing dark sunglasses. 

I’ve never seen him before, but that means nothing. My father taught me everything I know about finding henchmen.

“You Luke?” the man asks.

Bunce set up our email accounts, so she got to choose our names. “Yeah, that’s me,” I say, mentally sneering at Bunce’s taste. “Luke Walker.”

The man stares at me for a few moments, and then nods. “Get in.”

“Where are we going?” I ask, more for Snow’s benefit than for my own. Also, I feel like Luke Walker wouldn’t be stupid enough to follow someone to a third location.

“Classified,” the man snaps.

Fine. So Luke Walker will be stupid enough. I wonder how many earlier vampires came this far, only to turn around… probably not many. This man is promising the impossible, after all.

I walk around the van and get in the front passenger seat. Inside, it smells like decomposing upholstery foam and mold. 

The man doesn’t say anything, so I don’t either.

He pulls out of the parking lot and into traffic.

We drive north. The man doesn’t saying anything. I stare out of the windows for a bit, and then turn to him. “So how did you get into the vampire cure business?”

The man smiles. “Is that what you call your kind?”

I’m annoyed by this. “What else would you call us?”

He doesn’t respond to this, so I go back to staring out the windows. There’s something in the backseat making a mechanical sort of squeaking noise, something that hasn’t been properly lashed down.

I worry at my eyeteeth with my tongue. We’re heading too far north. We’ll be missing all of the close holes, the ones with Bunce’s carefully-planted cameras. Simon must be panicking right now, yelling at Bunce on his mobile as they follow my GPS signal.

I’ve got my wand — I want to reach for it, but I know I can’t give its location away. Right now this man thinks I’m a vampire. He can’t know I’m a mage as well. 

Not that being a mage will help me, once we get to the hole.

* * *

We drive for an hour in silence before he pulls off the highway. As he starts pulling onto smaller roads, I keep my gaze on the roadway in front of us.

Snow will be back there, behind us, following. I just can’t look for him. I can’t tip this man off to him. Not yet.

I feel the snap when we go through the boundary — we’re in a hole. My wand is useless, now. But we don’t go much further before we pull over, in a rutted lane beside a grassy field, and the man gestures for me to get out. 

He follows me out of the van. Now that I can see him properly, he looks a bit like an older, seedier Snow, with hooded eyes. He’s powerfully built, but gone to fat at the stomach. His hair is a mixture of bronze and silver in the sunlight, and badly cut. 

He squints around the field, and then puts his dark glasses back on. “We need to get something out of the back.”

I can feel tension crawling up the back of my neck, but I nod, and follow him up to the doors on the back of the van. The number plate is covered in mud.

_He must spend a lot of time in fields,_ I think.

He hops up into the van and starts manhandling the thing I heard squeaking in the back on the drive. It looks like a mad scientist’s keg — a wide balloon of some shiny metal, painted over with symbols, with a siphon sort of thing rising out of the neck like a still. It’s got canvas handles, awkwardly bolted onto a framework of metal strapping. 

I help lift the thing out of the van. It’s enormously heavy, even for me, with my vampire strength, and it doesn’t seem especially well built.

The man locks the van doors behind us and then picks up one of the handles. “Over there, now, there’s a good vampire.”

It’s uneven ground, and the thing lurches between us as we carry. “Is this how you cure vampirism? Where are we? Why do we need to be here?”

He doesn’t turn to look at me. “All in good time.”

My wand arm itches, but I can feel that there’s no magic here.

_I’m still a vampire_ , I think, and look him up and down. I can’t use my magic, but my strength and speed are unchanged; my teeth are still sharp. (Not that I would bite him. But if it came to biting a human or my own death, I probably could. My universe is collapsing into a set of judgement calls — better to physically subdue. But if not possible, bite; better to be known as a vampire who uses fangs in self-defense than to be a dead vampire. A doubly-dead vampire. _A pile of ash._ I think of the pile of ash in the car park and swallow.)

We half-carry, half-drag the thing across the field, over the uneven ground — him dragging, me carrying. I’m stronger than him. 

I think about how much stronger I am, and it reassures me. And then I try not to think about the fact that Christy was a vampire, too.

There are sheep in the next field over, calmly grazing, ignoring the strange humans and their shiny metal device. I’ve never had sheep’s blood. I’m going to get out of this and place a special order with Mickey and drink a gallon of the stuff.

When we find level-enough ground at the center of the hole, we place the machine — not aligned with any of the cardinal directions, just set down on the ground, not quite level. The man bends over it to check the valves and weird bits of metal.

“Can you answer my questions now?” I ask. I’m stalling for time — waiting for Snow to come with the cable ties. 

“You’re welcome to ask,” he says, checking another set of tiny bits of metal that look like they were stapled on.

“Fine. What is this thing?”

He stands, his hand on the contraption. “It’s a bit like a vacuum canister,” he says. 

Which tells me nothing. “A Normal vacuum? Do you —” _suck the life out of people_ — “suck the vampirism out of people?”

“Oh, nothing like that,” he says. 

He’s relaxed now, and that makes me nervous. Something is going on here that I don’t understand. I’m outside of his range, I have the advantage on speed and strength and everything else, but — he’s relaxed. 

There’s no way that’s a good sign.

I force myself not to look for Snow at the edge of the field. “So what is it?”

“This field is the real vacuum,” he says. “You’ve no idea how hard it was, finding a way to remove all the Magickal energy from a space, for my experiments. But then someone did it for me, and all I had to do was build old Bertha here.” He pats the side of the contraption. “You want to see her work?”

What I want is to run away. What I want is for Snow to show up with his sword. What I want — I swallow. “What does it do?”

He pats it again, and then puts his hand on one of the metal bits. “ ** _You’re under arrest_**.”

His voice — we’re in a hole, but he’s _speaking with magic_.

And then the spell catches me, and I fall down.

“This is _not possible_ ,” I say, from my position on the ground. My muscles are frozen — I try to fight, but they don’t move, at all. The grass is dry and poking into my skin. The sunlight is bright in my eyes. I can’t bloody move, I can’t move at all, except for breathing and talking and moving my eyes.

He laughs. Laughs and laughs and laughs, and there’s nothing I can do except hope for Snow, hope for Simon to pull another improbable rescue out even though he’s not made of magic anymore.

“I wondered if you might be one of that lot,” the man says. “One of the mages. They set you on me?”

I wonder what I should tell him. Yes, I have backup just over that hillside? He doesn’t seem worried. He’s been doing this for a while, and he knows something I don’t know.

_He knows how to find magic in holes._

“I was chattier with the ones like little Christy,” he says. “Had to keep them convinced that I knew how to cure what ailed them. Figured I didn’t need to worry with you. You were coming with me either way, weren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, trying to keep my eyes on him from my frozen position on the ground. (But I’m not seeing Snow, not even out of the corner of my eye. He’s not there. Where is he?)

“You had to know you were coming with me,” he said, and his voice is still flat, like he’s talking to a piece of furniture. 

_Where is Simon?_


	7. Chapter 7

**SIMON**

“We _lost him_ ,” I say. 

My hands are tight on the steering wheel. This cannot be happening. I will not allow this to happen.

Penny’s voice is distant through the mobile’s speaker. “Simon, don’t panic. I’m checking the GPS again now. And Baz’s mobile. Maybe they didn’t remove the battery.”

I hear Penny typing. She’s also muttering finding spells, returning spells — **The last place you look. What’s lost is found. Bring our boys home.**

But she’s in America, and I’m not a Mage, and Baz is in a hole, almost certainly. So that’s three reasons why we are so, so, _so_ royally screwed.

“I’m not finding him,” Penny says, after another round of useless finding spells. “Simon — I think whoever took him used Magickal means to prevent us from finding his location.”

_Bloody great._ “So after all this time we spent to make sure that our lovely Normal equipment would work in a hole, they just went and turned it all off with magic before they even got to the hole?”

Penny’s silent for a moment. “I’m so sorry, Simon.” 

She doesn’t need to say _We didn’t think of that_. I don’t need to say _I told you this was a terrible idea_. 

What we need to do is find Baz.

I grip the steering wheel tighter, and then force myself to breathe. 

“Penny, call your mum. Or anyone else on the Coven. Right now.”

I can tell Penny’s checking the cameras again. She’s already done that twice. We know Baz isn’t at any of the eight nearby holes. “Baz wouldn’t want —”

“If we could hear Baz, he’d get a vote,” I snap. “We need help. Better a known vampire than a dead vampire.”

Penny gulps, and then I can hear her dialing. Good.

I pour my focus back onto the maps, looking through what I can remember inside my head, checking and cataloguing and looking at the holes. I have enough time to hit one, maybe two, before — _Can’t think like that._

There’s one little hole, up north from where I am, barely bigger than the first hole, and it’s in the middle of a field.

I need to move. I need to do something. This little hole, this old hole, is as likely as any other, maybe more likely. I pull into gear and start driving north. 

“ _ **Simon says,**_ ” I hear Penny say from the mobile. “ ** _Simon says._** ”

I don’t look away from the road. I’m driving as fast as I can. “It’s not going to work, Penny.”

She’s crying, I can hear it in her voice. “It might.”

“It’s never worked before.” We tried it — Penny took me losing my magic so much harder than I did. Penny and Baz both did. They both tried **Simon says** and it’s never worked before.

“It worked with the Mage,” Penny says. “When you really needed it to.”

But I can feel that there’s no power there. There’s nothing. There’s only me, and a car, and a destination that I can only hope and pray is the right choice. 

**BAZ**

Whatever the man has planned requires extensive preparation. I’m starting to cramp up, here on the uneven ground, and he’s only partway through drawing the symbols on an extensive mage’s circle traced onto the dry grass with spray paint. He’s on his fourth can. 

He’s also started chatting at me — monologuing, really, because I’ve been ignoring him and trying to send our location to Snow through telepathy. The Normals believe in it; perhaps there’s something to it. Perhaps telepathy works even in holes.

And anything, even something pointless and hopeless, is better than listening to this oaf give his third repetition of The Time His Sister Felt Sorry For Him. 

“She used to come home from Watford,” he says now, “and feel sorry for me! Tell me all about how _unfair_ it was, how her bloody boyfriend felt like everyone should be able to use their wands. Even if they didn’t have any power. Even if they were a _dud_ like me. Oh, she never used the word, but she didn’t need to.”

“I decided right then and there. There’s nothing humans can do that engineering can’t do better. And maybe it took me thirty years, but I’ve cracked it. _Cracked it_.”

I shut my mouth as a bit of overspray from the can floats my way on the wind. I’m starting to get a bit high from the paint fumes. 

“They all said it was impossible,” he says, turning to look at me and then turning back to his painting. He’s doing it all by memory — his mage’s circle is as large as the field, and he’s not even checking his work. He’s done this before. Probably lots of times.

I wonder if Mum ever worked this way. 

Perhaps I’ll be able to ask her.

He keeps talking. He’s got another color of spray paint now, and he’s adding another narrow set of symbols.

I keep thinking of Snow. 

_Simon._

**SIMON**

I pull into the dirt track leading to the field carefully. If anyone’s there, I don’t want them to see me.

I’m three fields away when I see it: A dirty white panel van, exactly like the one that took Baz. 

There’s no way this is a coincidence, a panel van like this one being in a field. Being in _this_ field. It can’t be. The only question is — am I here in time?

I pull the car sideways, to block the van's escape route, as quietly as I can — driving any closer might alert them. I pick up the mobile from the seat next to me. “Penny, I’m in hole A-43-2001 — your father will know which one that is. I can see the panel van.”

“Is Baz there?” Penny asks.

“No idea.” I drop the mobile and grab my sword from the backseat. “I’m going in. Please call for backup from the Coven.”

“Simon —”

I can’t bring the mobile; it’ll give me away. “Penny?”

“Yeah.”

“If Baz gets out of this, and I don’t, tell him I love him.”

Penny’s voice is fierce. “That’s _not going to happen_ , Simon.”

I hope not. But I’ve seen the blood in the holes. I know there are no guarantees. 

“It’s not going to happen,” Penny says, again. “The Coven is on their way.”

But what we both know — what Penny doesn’t tell me — is that waiting for the Coven will take too long. I carefully open the door of my car and get out. I don’t shut up the car; can’t risk the noise attracting anyone’s attention.

And then I’m creeping down the lane, towards the van.

**BAZ**

There’s one bit of dried grass poking into my ankle. Or maybe it’s a twig — I can’t look down to decide. It’s just barely brushing my skin, and I can hardly stand the itching.

Funny, what takes your attention when a madman with a home-brewed death machine is preparing to kill you.

I try to move my muscles, breathing heavily with the effort, but the spell isn’t wearing off.

“The trained Mages didn’t even think to look for a better way,” the man says, conversationally, like he’s at a cocktail party. “Didn’t need to, did they. They have all that bloody magic. Natural magic. You know what I say? I say Man’s meant to improve on nature.”

**SIMON**

I keep down low to the ground, sticking to the dried mud in the ruts, avoiding any twigs which might snap and give me away.

It’s only one man in the field, and he’s stooped over.

I creep closer, using the panel van as cover.

I can see someone on the ground, but they’re not moving. _Maybe it’s not Baz._

The wind is blowing from the field, bringing with it the smells of growing grass and sheep dung and spray paint, and the voice of the man. I catch only a few words — _Magickal field_ and _bloody_ and _engineering_.

As I move closer, I can see that the man is working on a Mage’s circle — they’re advanced magic, old magic, the sort of stuff the Pitches probably worked in their ritual ground.

Penny told me a story once, about a mage who mixed up the markings on his ritual circle and walked in and was trapped there for a hundred years. When he finally got free, he found that everyone he ever loved was dead, and also there were steam trains and telegraphs.

But we’re in a hole. We’re working by Normal rules now. Aren’t we?

My sword is already drawn.

**BAZ**

I feel Snow’s presence before I see him. He’s creeping up from the lane, trying to stay hidden behind the hedgerows. 

The man is still monologuing at me, yapping on and on about all the Mages who did him wrong and telling me nothing to answer any of my questions. Although his actions have answered my last question — the doomsday device next to him, the one that looks as if it’s been put together as a prop for a bad movie — it has nothing to do with closing in the holes. It steals magic. It steals magic and it allows him to use it, even in holes.

And Snow doesn’t know.

I cough, from where I am on the ground, drawing the man’s attention to me for a moment.

“So that’s what that — thing — does?” I ask him. “It allows you to steal my magic. To steal other people’s magic. And then you can use it in a hole. Can’t you.”

He ignores me. But out of the corner of my eye, I can see Snow nod. He’s gotten at least part of the message.

“How can you use magic in a hole?” I ask, speaking as loudly as my partially-paralyzed stomach muscles will allow. “It’s impossible. I know you placed me in this full-body bind by using magic from that machine.”

The man stops what he’s doing, looks over at me. _Crowley, I’ve gone too far, he’s going to see Simon._

**SIMON**

I’m so relieved when I hear Baz’s voice, I almost forget to keep myself down, to keep myself out of view. 

When Baz stops talking, I creep closer. The man in the hole is wearing a clean shirt, but his trousers and his trainers are stained — dark reddish brown stains.

Blood.

He’s still talking to Baz — won’t shut up, by the sounds of it.

_Keep talking,_ I think, creeping closer. _Pay no attention to the man in the hedgerow._

**BAZ**

The man is looking at me now. I keep my eyes steady. 

Right now my eyes are one of the only things I can control, and I’m not about to let them give Simon away.

**SIMON**

We didn’t plan for this. We didn’t plan for any of this.

I’m circling the mage’s circle, carefully, when the inevitable happens — I step wrong, and the man hears me.

He turns around slowly, stepping away from Baz and the edge of his mage’s circle. “Ah. The backup. How did you find us?”

I raise my sword. “Unimportant.”

“I disagree,” he says, like he’s discussing his favorite flavor of coffee. “If I need new precautions in the future, I’d like to know what they are.”

I feel a surge of rage at his words — _in the future_. There will be no future for this man.

I raise my sword, and step closer. 

He doesn’t step back. He steps sideways — closer to the weird metal machine. My eyes flick to Baz and I remember his words — _using magic from that machine._

It’s impossible, of course, but then it’d hardly be the first impossible thing in my life. I move towards the machine, trying to block him from approaching it.

He gets to it first, though, placing his hand on its side and raising his other. “ ** _You’re_** —“

But I’m younger than him, I’m faster than him, and I’m already on him before he can get the rest of it out. I feint with my sword in my right hand, and then hit him across the neck with my left forearm. I'm going for the trachea. 

It’s a solid hit — I’ll have a bone bruise there, if we get out of this. 

He staggers back, squeaking and then inhaling. 

_Always go for the throat when you’re fighting a mage._

I raise my sword, circling around the machine, cutting him off.

Under our feet, the red and orange and green spray paint of the mage’s circle begins to glow. 

He rushes me, then, running at me, and I spin away, carving into the air with my sword, but missing him as he sprints past me for the van.

I look down at Baz — he’s still so still, there in the light of the mage’s circle, but he’s yelling. “Don’t let him get away, Snow!”

I stare at Baz for a long moment, and then nod at him. And then I’m running after the man, my feet unsteady on the pasture. He’s into the van, but he’s gone into the back, so he’s not trying to flee — is he looking for another machine? Does he have another one?

I can hear him wheezing.

I stop in the lane, just behind the van, and hold up my sword. “Get out of the van, and I’ll let you live.”

He stands still for a moment, and then throws himself away from me, toward the driver’s seat. The van is already moving when I jump for the back door — I barely make it, clutching my sword, grabbing onto the seats to stop from going backward. My grip slips and the sword’s blade bites into the palm of my right hand, and I only dimly feel it. 

“Stop the van,” I say, clutching the headrest and sweeping my sword over and around until it’s at his throat. (My hand is bleeding. The grip is getting harder to hold.) “Stop the van right now.”

He lets his foot off the gas, and the van bumps to a stop. “Go ahead,” he says. “Kill me.”

“With pleasure,” I say, but instead I take the cable ties from my back pocket, one-handed, and attach his hands to the steering wheel.

Penny thought of the cable ties.

He’s not going anywhere. 

**BAZ**

The mage’s circle is still glowing around me — the colors seem to have shifted as I’ve waited.

I try to roll my eyes up far enough to see Simon, to see the van, but there’s nothing I can do.

I close my eyes, and watch the colors of the circle pulse behind my eyelids.

**SIMON**

After I’m sure that he’s restrained, after I’ve cable-tied his ankles to his seat, after I’ve removed the keys from the ignition, after I’m sure that all possible tools have been removed from his side of the van — I leave to find Baz.

When I ran after the man, the mage’s circle was glowing. That can’t be good.

I start running.

**BAZ**

Snow enters the mage’s circle, and I can see that he’s hurt — he’s still holding his sword, but in his left hand. His right hand is covered with blood.

And then a drop of blood spills from his hand and hits the glowing letters of the mage’s circle. The painted lines flare. There’s a moment of pure silence, when it feels like the breath has been pulled out of the world.

And then there’s a rushing sound, like wind rushing in from all directions, and the fire of the letters is pulled from the grass and into the metal device, which makes a popping noise and then sits there, silent.

The grass is just grass, now. The paint is gone. There’s just grass, and sheep dung, and a bit of blood from Simon Snow.

**SIMON**

Baz doesn’t move, but his eyes are on me.

“I’m okay,” Baz says. “I just can’t move.”

I let out my breath, messy and ragged, and drop to the ground next to him. “Jesus Christ, Baz. Are you sure?”

“I think so,” Baz says. “He cursed me.”

I drop my sword — it’s bloody, with my blood — and take his hand in my left hand, the hand that doesn’t feel like it’s on fire. He can’t grip mine back, not yet. “Not much I can do about that.”

Baz lets out a short breath of air, almost like a laugh. “Even without magic, you still have to be the bloody hero, don’t you?”

I reach over and push his hair back from his eyes, carefully, so I won’t get blood on his face, and then shift so my shadow is shading his face from the sun. “Something like that.”

**BAZ**

Professor Bunce shows up first, of the Coven, and helps Simon bring me outside the hole, where they finally release me from the spell. I collapse to the ground after they release it, and Simon panics. But I’m fine — just muscle weakness, from trying to struggle against the spell for so long.

The first thing I do, once I can control my muscles again, is itch my ankle.

Simon calls Bunce from her mum’s phone — she’s panicking so hard I can hear it all the away from across the Atlantic. 

The Coven’s people take the man into custody, and then spend hours carefully searching the grass, taking notes about the machine. They’re practically questioning the sheep.

Dr. Wellbelove shows up, to heal Simon’s hand. He tries to look at me, but Professor Bunce steers him away. She must know I’m a vampire now, if she didn’t before. (Simon spent years telling everyone he could.)

The Coven wants to question us both, but Simon asks to take me home instead. I think he just wants to get me out of the field — I’m starting to shake a bit, and Dr. Wellbelove may not let Bunce’s mum steer him away again. 

Simon holds my hand all the way down the lane and back to his car. He opens up the car door for me.

Apparently vampires who get kidnapped by mad Normals get to sit in the front seat.

**SIMON**

I drive us home. 

I’ve just parked the car outside the flat when Baz reaches out for my hand. “So this is it?”

“What?”

“Being a good guy,” Baz says. “Winning. Is this what it’s like at the end?” He sounds — sad, mostly. 

“Yeah,” I say, thinking of Christy and all the others. The ones we weren’t fast enough to help.

“It seems like there should be something more,” Baz says. “Like sacrifices should be worth something.”

I squeeze his hand. “Sometimes the Mage used to tell me I did a good job.”

Baz starts laughing.

“I know,” I say, laughing with him. And I want to say something sarcastic, but the truth is, even with everything terrible the Mage did, everything terrible he tried to do — I still miss him. I still miss having someone in that role in my life. 

Someone to tell me I’ve done the right thing. 

I think of Ebb, going back to the Tower, knowing what was likely to happen. That’s sacrifice. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as brave as Ebb, but I can try to do the right thing. And hope that sometimes, like today, it’ll be enough.


	8. Epilogue

**SIMON**

His name is Matthew Salisbury, and he’ll be confined by the Coven for the rest of his life.

He’s been stricken from the Book. They’ve broken his wand.

Normally they’d take his magic as well, but this is a special case. He has very little magic to take, and he’s got all the knowledge to build another device. So the Coven voted, and decided to lock him up in a secure facility.

It’s funny — based on his notebooks, he killed at least eight people (four of them vampires). That we know of. Probably more. But he was also brilliant. He wasn’t educated at Watford, but he knew more about Magickal theory than anyone except maybe a few theorists like Professor Bunce. And he came at the holes — at all of Magickal theory — from a completely different direction. 

His research may be what lets us close the holes for good. 

Penny’s dad has all of his notebooks. They’re still trying to figure out how the device works — they know it’s something to do with the holes, that the Magickal stasis in the holes prevents your magic from leaving when you die, so the device can suck it in somehow. (Even Normals have a bit of magic, and vampires and other Magickal creatures have even more.) 

They’re still working out all the details.

* * *

I think I met Matthew Salisbury’s mum once — Lady Salisbury. She’s a friend of Agatha’s mum and I met her at one of the Wellbelove’s Christmas parties. She handed me an enormous bowl of trifle and then told Agatha a really filthy joke that made Agatha blush and made me snort custard into my nose.

I remember thinking that she was the sort of woman I’d have wanted for a grandmother, if I’d gotten to have a grandmother.

**BAZ**

The laptop on the coffee table is turned off, because Bunce isn’t on Skype — she’s on a plane, coming back to London. Coming home. 

She’s bringing Micah with her.

We went shopping, and Snow found a box of Wheaties somewhere and insisted on buying it to make Micah feel welcome. Then he started wondering what Wheaties tasted like, and then he opened it up to try a bit.

Now we’re out of Wheaties.

Snow’s on the couch next to me, staring off into space. I’m reading Rowland, again, trying to catch up with Snow’s previously-unexpected brilliance at Magickal theory.

Snow nudges me with his knee. “Baz?”

I don’t look up from the Rowland. “Yeah?”

“Do you think we’ve done enough to make Penny feel welcome?”

I look around the flat. Snow’s eaten all the Wheaties, but he’s also made a huge banner saying WELCOME PENNY AND MICAH. He’s returned all of Bunce’s whiteboards to her room, and cleaned the loo, and gone shopping with me to buy food (only mostly eaten by now) and bought more shampoo and conditioner to replace what he used up of Bunce’s. (He didn’t replace anything of mine — to be fair, he probably couldn’t have found mine. It’s from a specialist shop and they don’t believe in online trade. Also, he didn’t buy separate shampoo and conditioner for himself. Apparently he’s still planning on using Bunce’s.)

“I think it’s fine, Snow,” I say.

Snow’s restless. If he had that stupid ball he used to have in first year, he’d be throwing it against the wall and catching it. “Yeah, but will they?”

I give up and put Rowland down on the coffee table, which Snow has polished with cleaning solution. “What are you really worried about?”

“I missed her,” Snow says. “And… I want Micah to like it here. I don’t want him to take her away to America.”

I lean my head into his shoulder. His t-shirt is cheap, and it’s scratchy under my cheek, but he’s warm beneath it, my solid warm-blooded Chosen One boyfriend. “I know.”

Snow settles for a bit, and then picks up the Rowland from the coffee table. “What are you reading this for?”

“Brushing up on Magickal theory.” 

The truth is, I can’t understand one word in three when Snow starts going on about Magickal theory and everything they’ve learned from the notes of the man who tried to kill me. I refuse to let Snow get ahead of me. 

“You’re catching up on Magickal field theory with Rowland?” Snow says, sounding surprised. “Baz, Rowland’s terrible.”

Ah. Perhaps that’s why I’ve had such trouble. “Who do you recommend?”

“Oh, everyone’s terrible,” Snow says, flipping through. “Well, they’re mostly just wrong, that’s the real problem.”

“Wrong?”

“The holes changed our understanding of Magickal fields,” Snow says, wrinkling his forehead over a diagram and then slamming the book shut. “Nobody’s published anything new since then, though, they’ve all been too busy with research.”

I lean back into the couch. “So who do you recommend?” 

Snow jumps up off the couch and goes into our bedroom. When he comes back, he throws me a stack of ragged exercise books.

“My notes,” he says. “You can borrow them.”

“Your notes?”

“From working with Professor Bunce.” He drops down next to me on the couch. “He really should write a book… but he’ll never find the time. So I started keeping notes for myself.”

I open the first one. His handwriting is illegible. “Aleistair Crowley, Snow, who keeps your notes for you, intoxicated fieldmice?”

“If you’re not nice, I’m taking my notes back.”

I fend off Snow’s arm and start reading. 

**SIMON**

Baz curls up against the arm of the sofa to read my notebooks. 

They’re not in any order, really — just things I’ve picked up from Professor Bunce about Magickal theory. He lectures sometimes, and I usually try to attend, or to watch on Skype if he’s traveling. I try to work out easier ways to explain things if I understand what he’s saying (I don’t always). 

I may not _be_ magic anymore, but I still like thinking about magic. Seeing other people do magic. 

I’m staring at my banner, wondering if it’s enough for Penny, enough to make Micah feel welcome, when Baz looks over at me.

“Snow?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever think about using — that thing?”

It takes me a moment to work out what he’s asking about — the device invented by Matthew Salisbury. The mad death device. 

“I don’t mean the one he used,” Baz says, quickly, seeing the expression on my face. “But — if there was a way to power it up without killing someone.”

“It didn’t even occur to me,” I say. Because it didn’t. 

Baz sighs. “It occurred to me.”

_Because you’re a villain_ , I think. But I don’t say it. (Because Baz isn’t a villain. He’s just used to thinking like one.)

I flop back against the couch and stare up at the ceiling. It’s a question I’m not sure how to answer. 

Finally, I tear my eyes away from the ceiling and look at Baz. 

“We can’t even be sure it’d be safe for me to use magic,” I say. “I’ve cast one spell since I lost my magic, and that spell killed someone.”

Baz puts my notebook back on the stack on the coffee table. “One person who deserved it.”

I think of Ebb, and I can’t disagree. “Still.”

“So you’d rather close in the holes,” Baz says, nodding at the notebooks. “Rather than trying to get your magic back.”

“If I’m trying for the impossible?” I shrug. “Sure. I’ll start there.”

“You’re still Simon Snow,” Baz says, and leans back against my chest. “I’d bet on you.”

* * *

Baz texted Nicodemus, while we were driving back to London.

He sent back a one-word answer. _Good._

We haven’t heard anything from him since. 

Mickey’s still in business. Based on Salisbury’s notes, it looks like he found out that the vampires were using that butcher and then stopped by to take a mobile snap of the email list every so often. (Much to Baz’s relief, Mickey had nothing to do with this, and is still selling blood.)

Baz’s father is entirely innocent — of this, at least. Baz says we’ll go visit his parents again over his dead pile of ashes. But they’re coming down to London for a few days, and Baz has agreed to dinner.

* * *

When Penny and Micah arrive from the airport, she knocks on the door, but she’s got it unlocked and open before I can open it for her.

Merlin, it’s good to see her. She looks good, too — she’s wearing jeans and a silky purple t-shirt and she’s got her hair stuck up and away from her face with a pencil, but it’s trying to escape. “Simon!” she yells. “Baz! We are terrifically jetlagged and it’s wonderful to see you!”

Micah trails in behind her with their suitcases. Penny hugs me, and I hug her back. She’s warm and seeing her is the best thing ever.

Penny lets go of me and pulls Baz up off the couch to hug him. 

“You smell like blood and sage and airplane sweat,” Baz mumbles into Penny’s hair. But I notice that he hugs her back.

“Good to see you again,” Micah says, shaking my hand and slapping my shoulder. 

I grin. He’s grown a lot since we saw him last in person. “You, too.”

Penny lets Baz go, and turns to her room. “Right, we need showers. Simon, if you’ve used up all my shampoo again, I will cast something nasty on you.”

Baz shakes Micah’s hand. “Lovely to see you in person.” (Baz can’t remember Micah’s last name, and it’s driving him up a tree — I’ve told Penny not to tell him.)

Micah smiles. “You, too, Baz.”

Penny says they both need showers, but she gets caught up in talking with us. 

We’ve gone through the entire experience in the holes, plus Penny and Micah’s summer road trip, when Baz nudges me. “Snow?”

I turn away from Penny to look at him. He spent a bad few days after being kidnapped — no more than I did, I guess. We’ve both picked up a new nightmare. 

But he looks good. His hair is flopping down into his eyes. And even after nearly two years together, I’m still not used to seeing him smile at me.

Baz shakes his head. “Good to know I can still distract you, Snow.”

Penny’s smirking. “Get a room, you two.”

Baz coughs. “Actually, I was going to suggest that Snow and I get a curry while you and Micah get settled.”

“And so I can shower off the plane smell?” Penny asks.

“You said it,” Baz says. “Not me.”

We ask Micah what he wants from the curry shop — there’s no need to ask Penny; we’ve got this routine down. We take the long way round to the curry shop, to give Penny and Micah time to settle. 

When we get the food back to the flat, Penny and Micah are snuggled on the couch — _our couch_ , I think for a moment, and then remind myself that it’s the flat’s couch. 

It’s the flat’s couch, and it’s Penny’s couch, and it’s our flat. And they’re here, and we’ve got tons of food, enough for all of us. And we’re all together.

And maybe, for tonight, that’s more than enough.


End file.
